“It’ll be warm,” Clare said. Neva in a fit had strewn her paper dolls. Clare helped her pick them up and slip them into their paper wardrobe. “Come on,” he said, and she let herself be lifted into his arms. He leaned close to Neva’s ear. “You’ll get better there right away,” he said. “You’ll get so big I won’t be able to pick you up.”
He set Neva on the cold seat of the car and waited for his father to come out of the barn. He dreaded the moment that he would look at his father and his father would look at him. He stared at the house. It made him think of a large silent animal they were leaving to die. Charlotte and his mother came out with things in their hands. Charlotte was holding her notebook, and his mother carried the Tiffany lampshade she’d said she was going to leave behind. There had been a lot of talk about what to take and what to leave, what was too heavy and what was too hard to pack. They had to leave the sofa, the armchairs, the washing machine, and the stove. His mother wanted to take the radio, and that’s when his father had said, But we’re coming back, aren’t we? and his mother had fallen silent and there wasn’t any more discussion about the radio or coming back, either one. In the end, the only machine they were taking was the Singer. It was small and had its own carrying case.
Clare liked the lampshade, but doubted it was going to be easy to hold in the car all the way to California. It was big, for one thing, and the thick pieces of glass—amber, blue, ruby, and emerald—were divided by heavy lead. He opened the car door so his mother could get in, but she just set the lampshade down on the seat next to Neva and turned to walk back to the house. “Help me,” she said. He didn’t want to, but he did. He followed her back up the steps, through the door, and into the living room, where the furniture stood waiting as if this were an ordinary day. His mother unfolded a sheet and draped it over the radio. “Help me pull it taut,” she said. He held the sheet, and she took a roll of gummed tape out of her pocket. She dipped her fingers in a cup of water and moistened a length of the brown paper, and then she taped the edges of the sheet to the floor. It stuck in some places, but Clare could see it wouldn’t hold.
“I have to keep the dust out of the tubes,” she said.
“Well, we used it the whole time we were living here,” Clare said. “Never got dust in the tubes then.”
“Because I dusted it,” his mother said, but it didn’t really make sense. Nothing did.
“That ought to keep out the dirt,” Clare said just to say something, patting the top of the radio. He thought suddenly of Aldine in the barn, kissing his father like that. He could hardly believe it. Even having seen it, he could hardly believe it.
His mother nodded and looked around one more time before walking out to the porch with her mug of tape-moistening water. She was done. She was ready to go. She’d been ready for years. She set the mug down by the front door. “Come on,” she said. “I want to get going. Before this wind picks up.” But she still stood looking around.
Neva and Charlotte watched from the car, and Charlotte was angrily mouthing, “Come on!”
“Where’s Dad now?” Clare asked.
“Still in the barn, I guess,” his mother said.
He looked at the blank face of the barn as he walked and he climbed into the backseat with Charlotte. She was stiff and set and ready to go, too.
“Look at my hat, Charlotte,” Neva said, curling herself around so that she could hold both hands to the sides of her new beret.
“Looks familiar,” Charlotte said. She fiddled with the frayed edge of her notebook, and Clare wondered what he would learn if he stole it and read every word. The air in the car smelled like moist wool and gasoline.
“It’s like Miss McKenna’s, dummy,” Neva said.
Charlotte sniffed and said, “And where is the wee Scotch lass?”
“On her way to Emporia,” Clare said. “Dad took her to the station already.”
Their mother pulled open the car door, her wavy hair blown across her mouth for a second. Then she sat down next to Neva in the front seat and closed the door. Clare looked at the porch. The mug was still by the front door. That wasn’t normal. Nothing was.
“She gets to be a Harvey Girl,” Neva said in her high voice. “And I don’t.”
Charlotte sniffed again. “Huh,” she said doubtfully. “Is that why Dad isn’t here?”
“No,” Clare said. “He’s already back. He’s in the barn doing something.”
Charlotte’s eyes looked a little buggy, like they always did right before she told on Clare for smoking or missing school. “Well, I hope she has a loooove-ly time,” she said, her voice hard and meaningful. “Though I know she’ll miss our papa.”
From the front seat, his mother turned to give Charlotte a rigid look. “We don’t need any more meanness this morning, Lottie.”
Charlotte squinted her eyes a little. “Don’t call me that. And I don’t think it’s mean,” she said slowly, with particular emphasis on each word, “to point out that she was gaga for him. And—”
His mother cut her off. “Enough,” she said. She held the heavy lampshade and stared straight out the windshield.
The four of them breathing in the car staled the air and fogged the windows. Artemis barked from her wooden crate, pulling at the rope Charlotte had tied to the trailer. Clare thought of what he could say about the barn and his father kissing Aldine and he knew that he wouldn’t. He didn’t know what it meant. Maybe if he said nothing, it would mean nothing. He wiped at the window with a fingertip and thought suddenly of Mr. Tanner. A hardness like a peach pit formed in his stomach. “What did Dad say he was doing in the barn?” he asked.
His mother seemed not to hear. She sat with the lampshade and turned her wedding ring around and around on her finger, which she always did when she had nothing to do but wished she had.
Clare said, “I’ll go tell him we’re ready,” and stepped out of the car and walked steadily toward the barn, just as he had the night before, except that now he went to the wide barn door. “Dad?” he called.
No one answered, and when Clare thrust his hand into the gap between the door and the frame, he grabbed in the wrong place, where a rusty, broken clasp poked out. He knew that it was sharp, had been told several times to remove the clasp, and now it ripped into his finger. When Clare got inside, he held his index finger between his lips and looked with dread into the half darkness, to where his father was standing. He was holding a rifle.
“What are you doing?” Clare asked.
“Forgot that,” his father said, nodding vaguely. A few feet away the dulcimer case sat in the packed, oily dirt. His chin was bristly and his winter coat was muddy. He looked like he hadn’t slept. Knowing the reason for that made Clare feel queasy, and a little mean.
“We should go,” he said. “They’re all in the car.”
“I’ll be along,” Ansel said. He continued to finger the rifle.
“Okay,” Clare said, but he didn’t go. He felt the blood on his finger and brought it to his mouth again.
“Cut your hand?”
“Mmm.”