by Kate Whitsby
Alma took down the dress and ducked behind a curtain in the corner of the room that served as the sisters’ closet. Allegra sat down on the bed next to Amelia and kicked off her boots. Then she unbuckled her gun belt. She refastened the buckle and hung the belt on the bedpost. She did the same thing with the plain leather belt holding up her pants. Then she ran her fingers through her short hair.
“I guess we’ll all be going into Eagle Pass at the end of the month,” Allegra remarked. “We don’t get out to town much. We’ll have to make an inventory of supplies to get when we’re there. We might not get in again until next spring.”
“What did you have in mind?” Amelia asked.
“The most important thing is salt blocks for the cattle,” Allegra replied. “And we’re running low on lamp oil.”
“What about food?” Amelia asked. “Do we have enough salt and flour for ourselves?”
“I’ll check before we head out to work tomorrow morning,” Allegra told her. “I sure hope this Jude McCann character likes tortillas and prickly-pear relish. He could be a real Yankee for all we know. He might not fancy the food we eat or the way we eat it. He might get weird about us not using dishes and forks and knives and all that.”
Amelia chuckled. “That would certainly throw a wrench in their marriage, wouldn’t it?”
Allegra stared at her middle sister. Amelia almost never joked or saw the funny side of anything.
Alma’s voice floated over the top of the curtain. “What would throw a wrench in our marriage?”
“Nothing,” Amelia called back. Then she lowered her voice and murmured to Allegra so Alma couldn’t hear. “He’s from Amarillo. You would think he’d eaten country style before.”
Allegra shrugged. “I wonder if she asked him about that in their letters.”
Amelia smirked again, but they didn’t speak about it anymore, because Alma came out from behind the curtain, wearing their mother’s wedding dress. She swished right and left. “What do you think? The train is long enough to make up for the difference in height. I don’t have to let it out at all. I just won’t have to lift it up when I walk.”
Her sisters stared at her with their mouths open, but neither answered her.
Their silence startled Alma. “What’s the matter? Doesn’t it look good?”
Neither Amelia nor Allegra moved. After a moment, Amelia succeeded in closing her mouth.
“Is it that bad?” Alma asked.
Clarence broke the silence from his place by the fire. “You look like your mother.”
Alma whirled around. “Papa!” she gasped. “I didn’t know you were listening.”
“How could I miss it?” he asked.
Alma peered through the half-light of the lamps, trying to find his eyes in the dark. How much could he really see? “Can you see from over there? You’re in pitch darkness.”
“I might be in the dark,” he told her. “But you’re in the light. I can see you just fine. I didn’t realize you resembled her so much. You look the way she did when I took her to the altar. Looking at you, I could almost believe she’s still alive.”
Alma smiled into the shadows. Then she turned back to her sisters. “So? Do you think it will work all right?”
She smiled at her sisters, but they didn’t respond.
Amelia pried her eyes away from the dress and stared off into the darkness. Allegra gazed at her older sister a moment longer. Then she exploded into a flurry of movement.
She kicked her legs out along the length of her bed. She kicked all the articles Alma laid out so neatly from the trunk and sent them flying onto the floor. Then she kicked Amelia in the hips. “Get off my bed! Get off! Get off! This is my bed, now get off!”
Amelia cried out in surprise and retreated to her own bed, which just happened to be the next bed over. She went around the other side of it and sat down with her back to the room.
“What’s the matter with you?” Alma exclaimed. “What’s wrong?”
Allegra didn’t answer. She gave her empty bed a few more kicks for good measure before she stretched herself out on top of the blanket with her face to the wall.
Alma stared at the back of her youngest sister’s head. Was that a quiver she saw in Allegra’s shoulders? Allegra never indulged in emotional outbursts. She preferred indifferent mockery.
On any other night, Alma would have gone to Allegra’s bedside to find out what disturbed her so much. But, for some reason, the wedding dress stopped her from doing it. She hurried behind the curtain and took the dress off. She put on her night clothes in its place. When she came out, she laid the dress out on her own bed while she put everything back in the trunk. Then she laid her mother’s wedding dress on top of the pile and closed the lid.
She glanced around the room again. Was that a sniff she heard coming from Allegra’s bed. More and more frequently, Alma noticed her youngest sister slept in her work clothes. She took off her gun belt, boots, and hat, but she laid down on top of her bed in her pants and work shirt and slept that way until morning. She didn’t even cover herself with her blankets.
Alma stole a look at Amelia. Her middle sister sat on the edge of her bed, gazing off into the darkness, unresponsive to her surroundings. Alma didn’t bother to ask if Amelia would blow out the lights before she went to sleep. She didn’t say good night to her father, either.
The rupture they all feared so much didn’t need her or anyone else getting married. It already happened long before she even planned to get married. It crept up on them by degrees, over the course of years. Long over-familiarity bred complacency in their relations with each other.
Now, they didn’t even bother to speak to each other. They knew each other too well, and they took one another for granted. Alma didn’t have to ask Amelia if she would put out the lights. She already knew she would do it. She didn’t have to say good night to her father. He would be drifting in his dreams before the fire, already miles away from her and the rest of their family. He wouldn’t appreciate her calling him back from his travels just to wish him good night.
Alma looked around the room one last time. Getting married was the best thing she could do, the only thing she could do. They had lived together so long that now they no longer lived together at all.
Chapter 6