“Nobody answers,” the woman said, apparently to the car. Aldine didn’t dare look now.
“I’ll see if he’s out in the barn,” the man said, and Aldine pictured Mr. Josephson on his way to the barn, self-important and annoyed, no doubt, at how long this charitable act was taking. Aldine’s heart felt too big, and she leaned against the wall to steady herself. They would find Ansel, and maybe they would want to come in the house with the food. They would have all sorts of questions. She might go into labor while the Josephsons were blethering on, and what would Ansel say to explain the noise she was making upstairs?
For several minutes, Aldine heard nothing but gusts of wind and the scudding of shoes, as if Mrs. Josephson were walking back and forth on the porch to look for something or to keep herself warm.
When someone spoke again, it was Mr. Josephson in a brusque tone. “Leave it there.”
“Here?” Mrs. Josephson was incredulous. “On the porch?”
“Yes, on the porch, for chrissakes. Leave it and don’t expect to get the dish back, either.”
Aldine peered carefully out. Emmeline was stepping out of the car, followed by Berenice.
“Back in the car!” Mr. Josephson yelled at them. “Right now! We’re leaving.”
And in only a few moments more, they had all piled back into the blue car, and it was tearing away with the pop of spit-out gravel. Aldine sank to the floor until she had the breath to go downstairs.
The casserole dish lay just outside the front door, still wrapped in the checkered cloth, and the smell that came from it was heavenly. She carried the dish inside and sat down in the chair, unwilling to separate herself from its warmth and its savory scent, wondering what Mr. Josephson had seen or done or heard that put him in full retreat. She lifted the corner of the cloth and stared at the casserole with its perfect brown crust. For perhaps a full minute she sat holding the dish before Ansel emerged from the barn and joined her where she sat, holding it in her two warmed hands.
“Did they talk to you?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“See you?”
“No.”
“Good,” Ansel said, and then he said it again. “Good.”
Aldine was ravenous, and she held the casserole in her hands. “What happened then? Why did they leave?”
He had heard the car, he said, and he had seen Josephson making his way to the barn. He had turned back to look at the doctor’s Nash Phaeton in the corner of the barn. The tarps that they pulled over it did not quite cover the tires. Josephson would see it.
“So I went out,” Ansel said. “I told him to keep his distance. I lied to him a little bit. Exaggerated, you might say. I told him I had TB and had come home to ride it out one way or the other.” He smiled at Aldine. “Guess he believed me because he all but bolted for the car.”
Aldine gave out with a light musical laugh, and he would’ve laughed, too, but he was afraid it would trigger the hacking cough. He’d let himself cough for Josephson’s benefit. Let himself cough long and hard and when he’d spit onto the ground, they’d both stared at the blood-dark sputum. That was when Josephson beat his retreat.
Aldine pushed aside Ansel’s tools to make space on the dining room table and they began to eat. Gulling Mr. Josephson made the good food better, in Aldine’s opinion. Chicken and potatoes and gravy and carrots, all in a buttery brown crust—it seemed truly divine. For days they’d eaten meagerly on cornmeal cakes and stewed fruit and strange treacle-dark meat. Now they had home-cooked, hot-from-the-oven food. He ate, as he always did now, using his own spoon and bowl. She ate straight from the casserole dish. They ate and felt warmer, ate and ate on.
94
The first days of December had been hot and dry, as if summer had stolen into Fallbrook for a little visit, and when Lavinia climbed the stairs outside the café late Monday afternoon, she found Miss Price on the balcony, leaning on the brick wall with her eyes closed. If Miss Price had been smoking or hanging out laundry, it would’ve seemed more normal, but she was just leaning on the wall, eyes closed, wearing her red-and-black teaching dress with a pair of faded satin house slippers. Her hair was not fixed, and her complexion was very white. Lavinia didn’t know whether to creep ahead or clear her throat. It didn’t matter. A cat dropped from its perch on the railing, and Miss Price opened her eyes.
“Hi, Miss Price,” Lavinia said. “Hot, isn’t it? For December and all.”
Miss Price touched a hair to put it into place, but her hands were stiff and jerky, and her eyes seemed almost evasive. She might recently have been crying. “Are you all right, Miss Price?”
Charlotte gave a little laugh, and felt something bubble at her nose, which she daubed with her sleeve. No, as a matter of fact, she wasn’t all right. Nothing, not one little thing, was all right. “I’m fine,” she said. “Kind of a tough day for Clare, though.”
Lavinia’s polite-girl expression fell away. “What do you mean?”
“Dr. Quigley took the nail out today. Clare’s leg is up in a crane-thingy.”
“The nail?” She didn’t know there was a nail. Without wanting to, she thought of a fingernail being yanked out.
“I missed it,” Miss Price said. “I was still at the school, but my mom had to help. She said Dr. Quigley held a match to the pointy end of the nail, which went all the way through his leg, and then he turned it around in there to see if he could free it up.”
“God,” Lavinia blurted.
“It wouldn’t come free, and he was in such pain that my mom threw up, but Clare didn’t yell or anything. Quigley couldn’t get over that, how he didn’t scream.” She took a deep breath. “Anyhow, they had to put him under to tug and yank some more and it finally came out. Now his leg’s all plastered up and hanging from the ceiling, and he says he’s okay, but I don’t know if he’ll be up to much.”
Lavinia glanced toward the door that would admit her to the hallway. “Maybe I shouldn’t go in.”
Charlotte turned. “You should,” she said. “You did your hair and all.”
Lavinia shrank inside herself. She had curled every strand of her hair with rags, attempting something along the lines of Myrna Loy as the Countess Valentine, but what she saw in the mirror was more like Countess Valentine’s crazy old uncle.
“You sure?” she asked.
“One hundred percent,” Charlotte said.