Thereafter, in addition to homework, they would talk.
Clare would tell Lavinia things, like how they’d burned all their dead hogs in Kansas after the hogs died of cholera, and how they’d once had a schoolteacher live in their house, Scottish or Irish, she couldn’t remember which, but her name was Miss McKinnon and she had been like one of the family. He felt bad that they left her behind when they moved, and she never wrote back to him. Lavinia didn’t like that story because she could tell that, though he didn’t say it outright, this schoolteacher was someone Clare had been smitten by, except there seemed to be something even worse than that. It seemed somehow as if Clare didn’t mind—or perhaps even secretly enjoyed—Lavinia’s knowing that there had been someone he’d loved in this way, which might be a way he would never love anyone else.
Now, quietly, Clare said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I talked like that. I know you didn’t mean anything.” A few moments passed. Then he said, “My mother says my father isn’t coming back.”
“But why not? Did the bank business go wrong?” She’d heard Clare and everyone else say that’s what he was doing back there.
“That’s what we thought,” Clare said. “But he didn’t answer my mother’s cable, or Charlotte’s letter. And instead of just checking on our old house, we think he’s living in it. Some people we know, they’ve seen the lights on. And then a neighbor went over to visit, and found him there. He told the neighbor he was sick and was just riding it out, whatever it was.”
A few seconds passed, and then Lavinia said, “What’s your mom going to do?”
Clare shook his head. “I don’t know. Charlotte started wailing about how McNamara would never marry her now, which I don’t think is true, but maybe it is because my mother said not to tell him.”
He turned his brown eyes to her. They reminded her of little dark pools in the Santa Margarita River, the shallows of which were flecked with gold sand. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?” he asked, rubbing at the top part of his thigh like he wanted to get inside the plaster. “Like Candy and Myrtis or anyone.”
Lavinia stiffened. “Candy and Myrtis? I don’t talk to them about real things. I only talk about real things with you.”
This registered with him, too, just like the fact that she knew the number of days since the accident, and he seemed to be trying to decide whether to speak further or not. “There’s one more thing,” he said finally. He twisted toward the nightstand and felt for a book inside the drawer. From the book he retrieved a folded sheet of paper, which he handed to her.
At the top, it said, Rules to Be Observed for the Prevention of the Spread of Tuberculosis.
“I don’t understand,” Lavinia said slowly as she read the rules. “Who’s this for?”
“It was in my father’s account book. Folded like this with a bill from Dr. Quigley. I remember that he went to the doctor before he went away because my mom thought he had bronchitis.”
“Did you show this to your mom?”
“No.”
“Well, what are you going to do?”
“I already did it.”
Lavinia waited.
“When Dr. Quigley was here, before my mom came up, I asked him. He didn’t want to tell me at first, but then he said he gave the paper to my dad. There have been cases of TB in people who’d lived in the Midwest on farms, so he gave my father the test. My father was supposed to wait for the results, but he left.”
Lavinia looked down at her fingers. She didn’t know whether to prompt him or to wait.
“The test was positive,” Clare said.
“That means he has it, right?”
Clare nodded.
They both sat still, as if hiding from a large predatory animal that was sniffing for them in the woods.
“What about you?” Lavinia could barely croak out.
Clare shook his head. “He gave Neva the test when we first got here, and it was negative. He said that he took a sample of my spit when he operated on me that night after the accident. He said it was a public health issue. I don’t have it.”
Lavinia felt herself breathing again.
After a time, she said, “Maybe that’s why your father isn’t coming back or answering the door. So he won’t infect anybody.”
Clare pressed one side of his thigh. “I thought of that, but I don’t see how he could even know.”
“Did Dr. Quigley tell your mom?” Lavinia asked.
“I don’t know.”
Lavinia looked at the solid white plaster around Clare’s leg, and then at his fine-boned, unbroken fingers, precise and honey colored against the sheet. “I’ll bet that’s why he left,” she said softly. “He sensed it, and he went away so you’d all be safe.”
Clare looked at her with what she took for doubt, and then he closed his eyes. “I don’t think I can talk anymore, Vinnie,” he said.
The nickname, used for the first time, found the nerves in her face and hands and made them feel more alive.
“Do you want me to go now?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Come closer, would you?”
She couldn’t move the steamer trunk, so she went around to the other side and moved some clothes off a little wooden stool. Then she pulled the stool up to the side of the bed, and he opened his eyes to see where she was.
“Now give me your hand,” he said.
She put her hand in his, and even after he fell asleep, she stayed there like that, letting go only when she realized that the Rules to Be Observed were still lying open on the trunk, so she refolded the paper and hid it in the account book, which she slid into the drawer, and then she sat down beside the bed and took his hand again.
95