“I’m in town on a school trip,” she explains as he approaches with a stiff face.
Oscar takes Kath Ella’s hand and seems to let himself smile. “Give me the name of the hotel. I’ll come by tonight. I will park down the street. Can you get away at six thirty?”
“We’re leaving today to go back to Montreal.”
“Then why did you come to visit me?”
“I wanted to see you, even for a few minutes.”
Something about the statement seems to touch Oscar. But after glancing toward the building, he leads Kath Ella down the sidewalk. They halt near a tall delivery truck. “Perhaps you shouldn’t write to me anymore,” he says.
“Why not?”
“It would hurt my wife to believe there’s something inappropriate between us.”
Unable to form words, Kath Ella turns away from Oscar, not looking back as she heads away from him. On the long walk back to the museum, she tries to imagine what she could have done to make him welcome her. She has never met Oscar’s wife, yet she feels such hurt each time she recalls his face when he mentioned her.
The streets back in Montreal are covered in a dusting of snow. Kath Ella steps off the bus, wanting to appreciate the sight, but she feels a headache coming. Oscar’s words confuse her. Trudging across the campus, she can’t help wondering what would have happened if she had stayed overnight in Toronto. In the dormitory lobby she wipes the slush from her boots, concluding that she needs to forget about Oscar. If he cared for her, he would not have mentioned his wife.
This third year of classes is exhausting, especially her French courses. Both professors speak quickly and use big words. When the weather improves she goes only to a few of the popular parties in the Outremont district. And she does not accompany Yvette to any of the athletic matches at the nearby military college. Still, a week after March exams end, she carries a disappointing grade report to the academic building. She has come to ask the matron of students if she can make adjustments to her course of study.
“I’m afraid that is not possible,” the matron says. “Your scholarship requires that you study French culture. You can manage, my dear. Work harder.”
The matron of students sounds like Mrs. Eatten, Kath Ella thinks later, on the way to the dining hall. Ordinarily that would be a good feeling, but not today.
After dinner, Kath Ella wants to lie down, but she feels nervous and energetic and decides to write a few letters. The first letter is to Philippe Mallachoy, a young man she has been meaning to write for weeks. Philippe has been leaving notes for her at the reception desk downstairs, but she has not picked up any of them. She met him last year at a memorial service for his father, who had been the college’s chaplain. Last spring she told Philippe she was being courted by a man who lived out of town. Still, Philippe insisted on escorting her to the fall social. At the Ice Breakers carnival he bought her a large Strawberry Cassandra and said she was the only girl he thought of night and day. But one afternoon, as she was strolling along Rue Saint-Hubert and thinking of giving her body to Philippe, she saw him a few blocks away, kissing another girl from the college. Watching them in their fur coats, smiling at a troupe of jugglers that had wandered over from Rue Saint-Denis, she was hot with anger.
Kath Ella finishes her letter to Philippe while the last bits of sunlight strike the enormous oak limbs outside the window. Seeing the kiss is not the reason I no longer want to keep company with you, she writes. I simply must be attentive to my studies now.
Then she opens the most recent letter from Oscar. It had arrived several days ago. Written with the hard strokes of an expensive fountain pen, the letter explains how disappointed Oscar feels in recognizing he could never care for her the way she wants. Reading the letter again, Kath Ella recoils at how much pain the words cause her.
Eventually she places four sealed envelopes along the edge of her desk. She feels no compunction about mailing the letters to Oscar and Philippe. And she will certainly mail the letter home to Shirley. But what about the letter she has written to Oscar’s wife? She was so satisfied with herself when she had the idea of not including a return address. But now she feels bad. Should she send that letter, too?
At a piano recital in Byerly Hall the next afternoon, Kath Ella waves at Philippe across the room. She feels happy to be done with him, or at least resigned to never spending time with him again. Leaving the auditorium, she heads across campus, realizing that no new letters from Oscar Mislick will make their way into her memory cabinet back home. She is happy about that, too.
Her father also says that you should always answer a person’s letter even if your response is that they should go jump in the basin. Later in the day, Kath Ella carries the four letters to the postal bureau. Standing before the letter bin, she drops in the letters to Oscar, to Philippe, and to Shirley. Turning to leave, she walks a few steps, returns to the bin, and drops in the letter to Oscar’s wife.
Back in her room, Kath Ella recalls her criticism of Oscar and realizes he is not the only one guilty of failing to correspond. There are a number of unanswered letters stacked on her own desk. In the evening she skims a few from Kiendra Penncampbell. Based on what Kiendra writes in the letters, Kath Ella has evidently been revealing plenty about life here in Montreal. She wrote to Kiendra about the joy she felt when she took a boat trip up the Saint Lawrence River with Oscar, and of being a teacher’s aide at the Saturday education program at the East Lawrence Community Center. She even wrote about how Ursula Branbower called her a dirty nigger monkey after she beat her out for junior class stentorian. Kiendra knows about the professor Kath Ella had let fondle her breasts during evening office hours, and, of course, about the troubles with Oscar Mislick and Philippe Mallachoy. My goodness, the things she probably should not have written.
You have never come to see me when I’m home from college, Kath Ella writes in a letter to Kiendra. If you do not come up to Halifax this time, you will miss seeing T-House Patton. I just happen to have two tickets to his sold-out show in July at the China Tavern. If you do not come up from Wells Bridge, I guess I will have to give the other ticket to my sister, Luela.
The day she returns home to Halifax, Kath Ella forgets about Kiendra for a few hours. She is elated to learn she won’t have to toil in the Hardware Barn. Chevy Platt says that in honor of her becoming a senior, she can have a job at his other business downtown. But she is hesitant to tell her father.
“What does Chevy Platt do at that office these days?” she overheard George ask Shirley the previous summer. “Other than take money from jailbirds?”
“Chevy Platt runs a legal business,” Shirley replied.
“Well, legal isn’t necessarily legitimate,” George said.
To Kath Ella’s astonishment, neither George nor Shirley raises objections to her taking the new job. And neither objects when she asks if she can live with Luela for the summer, to be closer to the job.
Am I the favorite daughter again? Kath Ella wonders on Tuesday morning, beaming as she carries her suitcases up the stairs to Luela’s third-floor apartment in Simms Corner. Shirley and George must think three years of college have matured their daughter.
Two days later, Kath Ella and her sister are preparing to sit down to a very early dinner when the doorbell rings.
“Kiendra?”
“Hey, girl.”
Kath Ella holds her friend in a long embrace. “What happened to your long hair?” she asks when she lets go.
Kiendra plays with her bangs and then pats the side of the full-volume waves. “Why are you crying?” she asks. “My hair will grow back.”
“I’m not crying about your hair, silly,” Kath Ella says. “I suppose it finally feels like I’m home.”
“Simms Corner isn’t home,” Kiendra says. “The bluff is.”
While Kiendra helps Luela set the table, Kath Ella lifts the cover off a pot on the stove. Her sister cooking a nice meal on a Thursday before going to work? She should have suspected a surprise visi
tor. Spaghetti with clams is Kiendra’s favorite dish.
Kiendra had written in a recent letter that she had lost a bucketload of weight. But she doesn’t look thin. She moves easily in Rosa’s beige dress and red suede shoes. Luela is right, Kath Ella thinks, watching Kiendra slide onto a chair at the table. Kiendra is looking shapely like her sister.
“Wells Bridge was too quiet a place for this gal,” Kiendra says, during the meal. “When I skedaddled from there, I stayed at a few places I shouldn’t have. But now that I’m seeing Buddy Taylor again, I’m trying to get right with Jesus.”
“That is a tale you’ve been telling all over the Hindquarter,” Luela says. “I hope you mean it.”
For dessert there is a four-layer lemon cake. Watching Kiendra use a fork to separate the sections of her slice of cake like she used to as a child delights Kath Ella. That is a sight she wishes she could capture for her memory cabinet. But the sight also dredges up a few sad childhood memories. Later, while they clear the table, she is tempted to ask Kiendra if her mother still believes the trouble the girls got into a few years ago in the South End was Kath Ella’s fault. Kath Ella wishes she didn’t concern herself with that matter any longer, but she does.
In the living room, Luela presents two tickets for the Thursday matinee at the downtown cinema. “I can’t use these,” she says. “I have to work.”
“I’ve got a present, too,” Kath Ella says, reaching into her purse. “This one’s just for you, Kiendra.”
Kath Ella takes out a silver-plated bracelet with two dangling charms. “You gave me a present for my birthday once,” she tells Kiendra. “But in all these years, I never gave you one back. The bracelet holds twelve charms, but I could only afford two.”
Kiendra reaches for the bracelet, as if she is afraid it might take flight. With a broad grin, she lays it across her wrist. While Kiendra puts on the bracelet, Luela tells her and Kath Ella the news about the apartment building being erected a few blocks down Gottingen Street. “I heard they want twenty dollars a month for a tiny two-bedroom,” Luela says. “Now who in the Hindquarter has that kind of money?”
Kiendra does not seem to be listening, too busy grinning as she inspects a charm on the bracelet. Later, when she and Kath Ella are preparing to leave to catch the bus downtown, she shows the bracelet to Luela, shaking it near her face.
“Yes, gal, I see the trinkets,” Luela says. “Now quit jangling them at me. God does not like a show-off.”
Outside, instead of crossing the street to catch a downtown bus, Kiendra halts on the crosswalk, looking in the direction of the construction site of the new apartment building. “The fence has come down,” she says. “Let’s go take a peek.”
Kath Ella has to step quickly to keep up with Kiendra, who is rushing down the sidewalk. At the construction site only the length of chain link that fronts the sidewalk has been removed. Three sides of the work site are still fenced. Kath Ella studies the redbrick building, whose front is covered in a fine dust. No grass has yet been planted in the front yard.
“My daddy says the city hall big shots are putting up this rat-hotel to stop more house building on the bluff,” Kiendra says. “They are trying to get people off the Hindquarter.”
“Plenty of people need to get off the Hindquarter,” Kath Ella says.
“Yes, but why can’t it be to a place with nice bedrooms and a nice yard?”
Kiendra heads along the side of the building, which is littered with empty paint buckets, broken floor tiles, and piles of discarded bricks. “We don’t want to be late for the picture show,” Kath Ella says, walking behind her.
“Then we better put some fire in our feet,” Kiendra says, starting to stride faster.
Three wings jut out of the back of the building. At the rear door of the nearest wing, Kiendra presses her face against a small window and looks inside. When she turns the knob and pulls, the door opens.
Kiendra wheels around and looks at Kath Ella with a wide grin. “Well, what do you know?”
“We don’t have time to go inside,” Kath Ella says, turning to head back. “We have to hurry to make it to the picture show.”
Heading toward the front of the building, Kath Ella hears the back door shut. What a relief to see Kiendra round the back corner. But why is she carrying a half brick?
Before reaching Kath Ella, Kiendra halts and holds up the half brick. “How much you want to bet me I can’t bust that high window?” she says.
Kath Ella watches with disbelief as Kiendra stretches out her arm and points at a third-floor window. She could give a laugh, as if she suspects Kiendra is just kidding, but she cannot manage it. That she has let herself again arrive someplace where Kiendra plans to do mischief angers her. She recalls the look on Kiendra’s face by the crib the evening they carried the doll into the house in the South End. She remembers the doll as it lay in the crib next to the baby. Later the doll was a mangled mess—head, body, and limbs yanked apart and tossed back into the shopping bag. She left the bluff for college, believing Kiendra was mangled, too. Yet in none of Kiendra’s letters from Wells Bridge had there been any hint that the reckless girl still existed. But now here she is, wearing grown-up hair and suede shoes.
“I’m sure that you are beyond childish pranks,” Kath Ella stammers, then resumes her way toward the front of the building. “I’m sure you will drop that piece of brick and we can get going.”
Kiendra remains near the back corner. She weighs the brick in her hand the way her aunt in Wells Bridge used to weigh cantaloupes at the market. Its coarse surface reminds her of the patch of rough skin on her aunt’s arm. Her aunt says an elderly relative she once cared for had spilled a pot of boiling water on her arm, not knowing who she was. Kiendra has never believed that. For most of the first week she lived in the house in Wells Bridge, she went to bed crying about how horribly her aunt treated her uncle. And not once during the two and a half years she lived there did her aunt offer a kind word to her.
A hazy reflection moves across the surface of the high window. Kiendra frowns. She recently heard that Gussie Mills has been telling former neighbors that when Kiendra went missing from the bluff years ago, she had been carried off to a crazy farm. Her aunt certainly thought the girl’s head was scrambled, because during the first few months Kiendra lived in Wells Bridge, the woman took her to the doctor several times for observation. The doctors found nothing unusual in her head, so she must be cured of whatever the fever did to her brain. Still, the reflection moving across the high window disquiets Kiendra. Is it real or is it a trick of her mind?
Kath Ella looks back just as the brick leaves Kiendra’s hand. It arches high but misses the window. After striking the side of the building it tumbles to the ground, where it lands with a thud. Kiendra is about to toss it again but she hesitates, looking toward the sound of someone yelling near the front of the building.
A constable is coming.
Rushing forward, the constable motions for Kath Ella and Kiendra to approach him. “I’m not going there,” Kiendra says. “He saw me throw the brick.”
“What are you going to do?” Kath Ella asks.
“Go in the back and out the front. Easy peasy.”
The constable yells for Kiendra to halt, but she disappears around the back. At the curb, a younger, pudgier constable has gotten out of their vehicle. After a signal from the older constable, the younger one takes off toward the far side of the building. “Your little friend thinks she is smarter than me,” the constable says, approaching Kath Ella. “But my buddy there will catch that little imp when she comes around the other side. Meantime, you get to that vehicle and wait there until I return.”
Kath Ella takes a few steps, but then looks behind her at the constable running after Kiendra. Should she go wait at the vehicle as she was told? Or should she go see what is happening at the rear of the building?
Now a racket comes from the front of the building. Kath Ella rushes to the entrance. Through the small window in t
he door she can see Kiendra, banging on the door to get out. Kath Ella reaches for the doorknob, but there is a metal plate where the knob should be. Three boys arrive and help Kath Ella push the door. But it will not budge.
Kath Ella looks through the window again. The lobby is empty. Come back here, Kiendra. Come back.
Kath Ella runs alongside the building trying to shout again to Kiendra, but though she opens her mouth, no words come. At the nearest wing the rear door has been flung open. Somewhere inside, Kiendra is yelling. The constables are inside, too, barking orders. The commotion seems to be happening on the second floor. Have they cornered her there?
When one of the boys tries to enter the building, Kath Ella shoves him back. “All of you had better stay right here,” she yells. Her voice has come again, but it is thin and brittle. “If one of you tries to come inside, I will knock your head.”
She hears a crash inside the building. Has Kiendra thrown something at the constables? A loud pop, like a firecracker, echoes inside. Then she hears Kiendra scream.
Kath Ella rushes into the building. Her legs feel heavy as they carry her up the stairwell. With each step she feels her face grow hotter. In the air, thick with dust, it is a struggle to breathe.
On the second-floor landing she sees the pudgy constable approaching out of the gray dimness. Breathing heavily, he looks ten years older than he had outside.
“Afraid I can’t let you go any farther, ma’am,” he says. “Go back down the steps and exit the building.”
“Not without Kiendra.”
When Kath Ella steps forward, the constable raises his pistol. He sticks it so close to her right eye that when she blinks, her eyelash brushes the barrel.
“I said back on out the door, ma’am. Do it before I blow your damn head off.”
The Ladies Club
Over the years, Oneresta Higgins has served on numerous committees working to improve the lives of Woods Bluff residents. The notice she sent last winter, announcing the dates for the 1936 Woods Bluff Spring Jamboree, included a note informing residents that Platt’s Hardware Barn was offering a nice discount on house paint. The note came after the long speech Oneresta gave at the last Woods Bluff Citizens’ Advisory Meeting about how nice the bluff would look if neighbors painted their houses vibrant colors. Chevy Platt didn’t have the paint in stock at the Hardware Barn, the note said. But if enough neighbors placed orders (and paid in advance) they could purchase the paint at wholesale.
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