“I’m fine,” Ellie said. “Can I get you something?”
Lavinia felt Dr. Quigley watching her. Now what should she say? Lavinia never ate or drank anything in the café. She couldn’t afford to. Though the lemon meringue pie on Dr. Quigley’s plate looked wonderful.
“I was just wanting to ask about Clare,” she stammered.
“Oh, how nice of you,” Ellie said.
“He’s going to be flat on his back for at least six weeks,” Dr. Quigley said, smiling at Lavinia and then at Mrs. Price. “In boy time, that’s roughly six years.” For this, he received a sad smile from Mrs. Price, and then he took up another forkful of lemon pie.
“But he’ll be all right,” Ellie said. “That’s the important thing.” Actually, the important thing, Ellie thought, was trying not to picture the way the openings in Clare’s leg oozed, the look of the nail disappearing in flesh. Clare actually moaned from the pain in his sleep at night. Days, though, he suppressed it. Dr. Quigley had shown her how to give him shots and she tried not to think of the bills. She tried not to think of Ansel’s silence. She’d sent a cable to the farm days ago, and she hadn’t heard a peep out of him.
“I have the lecture notes for him,” Lavinia said, her face coloring. “From Latin and English. If he feels like it, but maybe he doesn’t.” If Mrs. Price told her to leave the notes in the café, what about the soap and tinned asparagus? What was she going to tell Mrs. Price about that?
“Maybe he’d like to see a friend,” Mrs. Price said. “Charlotte’s sitting with him.”
That was a relief in one way, but—a small surprise—she also felt a little let down. She made her way, as directed, to the outdoor staircase, where Clare’s little sister was sitting on the bottom step, waving a broom straw over a line of acorns. She was talking to them in a funny way, like she was reciting a poem:
“Roll on, roll on, you noisy waves,
Roll higher up the strand.
How is it that you cannot pass
That line of yellow sand?”
Then Neva knocked down the acorns with the straw and looked up at Lavinia.
“Hi,” Lavinia said.
“Hi,” Neva said, pushing back her hair with a grubby hand. “It’s okay for me to be out here,” she said. “I’m not sick now.”
“No, I can see you’re not,” Lavinia said. “Besides, it’s so warm out.” She wasn’t sure what Neva was talking about, but the girl looked perfectly healthy in spite of being one of those children whose arms and legs still looked bony inside her cardigan and puff-kneed woolen tights. If there was anything newcomers to Fallbrook had in common, it was a tendency to overdress their children on sunny winter days.
At the top of the stairs, Lavinia paused to compose herself. She could see bins of oranges outside the packinghouse, the queen palm tree, Mrs. Nuthall’s dance studio, and the modest wood-frame houses that stood at odd intervals near Main Street. The El Real was by far the nicest building, so it seemed right that Clare Price should live there. The pink brick, the elaborate windows, and the Spanish roof belonged in some distant and important city, not a farm town. She and her parents lived in a house that had come in a kit that cost twenty-five dollars.
Lavinia stood on the landing and considered leaving the bag of groceries on the doorstep and going away. Miss Price had given her a B on the dress she was at that moment wearing because the stripes didn’t match quite right in front. But of course Miss Price had heard Lavinia’s feet on the stairs, and she opened the door.
“So,” Miss Price said, “I guess you’re here to make one of those damselly visits that would be appreciated.”
“Yeah,” Lavinia said, abashed. “Unless you think it’s a stupid idea.”
“Nah, come in, come in. The poor boy could stand some cheering up.”
Lavinia stepped awkwardly into a dark hallway that connected a series of doors.
Charlotte led Lavinia into the nearest room, where suddenly—too suddenly, really—she found herself standing a few feet from Clare Price. One of his legs was much bigger than the other, a long lump in the bed. She tried not to stare at it, but to look at his face was difficult, too, because he was lying in a bed, and he didn’t smile.
“Hi,” Lavinia said. He was pale and obviously sick but to be near him was still to feel inferior. She wished she had been patient enough to make the stripes in her dress match. She felt suddenly overly warm; her slip was like an adhesive bandage.
“Hello,” Clare said. He thought more remarks were probably called for but he couldn’t think what they were. Right now the pain was gone but it was waiting for him. It always was. The sharp sting, the long shooting pain, or the ache. There were those three of them, lying quiet for a while, and then one of them would come.
“I have some wedding stuff to do,” Charlotte said, touching Lavinia on the shoulder. “Will you stay with the invalid until I get back? My mom’s right downstairs if you need her.”
This unnerved Lavinia but she tried not to let on. She made a stiff smile and waited until Charlotte was gone to open up the heavy canvas bag.
“I brought you some things on behalf of the Red Cross League,” she said. She was going for an ironic voice, but she could tell it just sounded twangy.
“The local chapter, anyway. The Melanie-Candy-Myrtis chapter.”
His eyes shifted away. Because he felt like a charity case? Because of pain? She reached into her bag and brought out the asparagus tin, the powdered sugar, and the candy. Each in its own way felt absolutely wrong. She set them on his nightstand and in the ensuing silence her face grew hotter and hotter.
Finally she said, “I thought maybe your mom could use them. In the restaurant.”
“That’s swell,” Clare said, afraid to speak too much or move his head. The pain had begun; he could feel it stirring.
“Except for the soap,” Lavinia said.
“Nope. Can’t cook with that.” He hoped it would only be the sharp sting when the morphine faded. Not the long ache.
“And I have the lecture notes from English and Latin. So you won’t miss what Miss Warren said in class.” Lavinia held out her notebook but Clare just looked at her. It wasn’t the stinging kind. It was the long ache. The ache was starting. It was weak but it would get stronger. He felt his jaw setting against the pain. “Just set it on the bed, okay.”
Lavinia set it down, mortified. She never should have come.
“The phrase of the day’s there,” she blurted out. “In omnia paratus. That was today’s.”
Clare closed his eyes.
“It means, ‘Ready for all things,’” Lavinia added. She knew he didn’t care, but she couldn’t help herself. “In case you wondered.” She looked at the package of Christmas candy and wondered if he would even open it. “I guess I’ll go now,” she said.