“I’m in the middle of something in the barn,” he said. “We can talk about it later.”
She nodded. After he left the house, she went to the window and looked beyond the cottonwood to the barn, and beyond the barn to the field, and beyond the field to the thin brown line of road, a road on which she could see the black shape of a passing car, one in which the driver and passenger might turn their faces to look, to take note, to carry word.
90
The nearness of the wedding put Charlotte in a jangly mood. She was barely able to read the message Clare wrote back to Lavinia, the one he’d printed so elegantly in Lavinia’s Latin notebook, the one she was supposed to return to his little Florence Nightingale. “So what’s it mean?” she asked Lavinia on the front steps of the school.
Lavinia gave her a baffled look.
“Quantum mutatus ab illo,” Charlotte said, giving the words a flat, twangy sound to make it seem like she wasn’t even trying for authentic pronunciation.
“How changed from what he once was,” Lavinia translated. “Why?”
“Check your Latin notes,” Charlotte said, handing over the book. “Clare’s written you a little Roman apology. I think he’s waiting for a High Latin reply.”
If Lavinia had been smitten before by Clare’s face and body, she now felt a torturous kinship, an almost fanatical desire to win him by irony and wit. She had his words in her book. His Latin words. She spent her lunch hour searching through her reader for something not too preachy or inspirational. At last, she decided on semper eadem—“always the same.” She wrote it carefully in her most feminine cursive, swirling the last stroke of the m as if answering one of those riddles in a Greek play where you won a kingdom for the right answer. Then she carried the notebook back to Miss Price, who was cutting out what had to be her wedding dress on one of the long homemaking tables. “Here’s today’s work,” Lavinia said shyly, wondering if Miss Price would read it. Probably she would. Of course she would!
Charlotte nodded without looking up from the creamy expanse of satin. The more she tried to weigh the fabric down and line it up for cutting, the more it slipped away from her like yards of milk. “I’ll give your missive to the invalid.”
“That’s pretty fabric,” Lavinia said. Sunlight poured into the home arts building and she could see a hawk circling in the blue sky framed by the window. A crow passed in the same arc, the two arguing in midair, as crows and hawks always argued, she never knew why, though it made her wonder. Wasn’t one a scavenger and the other a predator? And wasn’t there sky enough, and trees enough, and food enough for both of them?
“It’s charmeuse,” Charlotte said, her body tense with the effort of holding the fabric in place.
“You should come visit Clare again,” she said. “He’s going bats staying in bed all the time.”
“I don’t know,” Lavinia said, fingering the chrome edge of the table. “Maybe he just wants the notes.”
“Maybe,” Charlotte said, “but maybe not.” She pretended to study the grain line she was measuring until Lavinia had turned away and walked almost to the door. “He thinks you’re clever,” Charlotte said. “He told me.” She smiled her warmest smile. What Clare had actually said was that Lavinia was a little too clever, but that was just the usual fear the male species had of being shown up in the Brain Department.
The door closed behind Lavinia, and Charlotte sighed. The charmeuse had half cascaded over the edge of the table, and she felt cranky and incompetent. What kind of bride—and domestic arts teacher!—was still sewing her dress four days before the vows? Last July she had described her curriculum as “vocational homemaking and related courses planned to help the girl of today not only to live as a member of her family group, but to live well.”
Not only to live, but to live well. She had to laugh. What a stuffed goose she could be.
Charlotte was straightening the charmeuse when the door opened again and Mister stepped quietly in, a surprise because she didn’t usually see him during the school day. It was awkward, his being both on the school board and her fiancé, but she gave him one of her lavish smiles as he approached, and he removed his hat. There was something apologetic about the way he walked toward her—something about the way he only half smiled—that made her wonder if something was wrong.
“How’s my goddess of the hearth?” he said.
“Snipping this expensive cloth to ribbons,” she said, giving it a rueful glance. “Should’ve used poplin, I guess.”
He made a murmuring sound. “Well, maybe if you stop feeling the pressure of getting it done by Friday.”
This immediately set off alarms. “What do you mean?” she asked.
His gaze moved from her to the window, then down to the hat he held in his hands. Something was going on—she could feel it. He usually eased close and leaned into her, letting hands slide where they could—those were his goatish ways—but today he sat there fiddling with his hat.
“I’ve been talking to Ida,” he said slowly, as if reading the words from the inside brim of his hat, “and she thinks—we think—it would be better to put off the date. You shouldn’t get married without your father here, and I feel a little selfish taking your whole family over to the church while Clare is an invalid.”
“I don’t want to put it off,” Charlotte said at once, surprised at her own vehemence.
“I don’t either,” he said in a low voice. He tried now to lean against the table and bring her to him, but she stood fast and cold. “I don’t want to wait,” he whispered, running one hand down her arm and onto her backside, which stiffened her and made her glance at the doors and windows, afraid to see Candy or Myrtis looking in.
She eased free of him and said, “My uncle can give me away.”
“He can, but I’m sure your father’s trying to wrap up his business in Kansas and get back here for this. How will it look if we go ahead without him? I’m going to be in your family from now on, and I don’t want to start by burning bridges.”
“You don’t know my father,” Charlotte said, and at once wished she hadn’t. What did she want? For her fiancé to think her father was off committing adultery? “I mean that he’s not one to take offense. He’s practical about things, and he’d want us to be practical, too.”