Francesca of Lost Nation

by Crosby, Lucinda Sue

“You two and Sarah must come out for dinner some night soon. We’ve got some lovely quail in the deep freeze with your name on it.”

  “We’d love to,” answered Matt, placing his arm around Francesca’s shoulders and giving her a hug.

  Several surprised looks were followed by a murmur here and a remark there.

  Francesca and I didn’t win any ribbons in the three-legged race, but we sure had fun. We busted a gut with laughter as we kept falling and tripping over each other. During the watermelon-eating contest, I ate until my stomach hurt. At least I didn’t upchuck like Stevie Enoch!

  That evening, as we cleaned up the leavings of our second picnic of the day with family and friends, Matthew dropped the bombshell.

  “Franny here is driving my Silver Ghost in the races at the county fair in Clinton. I’ve got some money that says she’ll beat the pants off of everyone else.”

  Who needed fireworks?

  This tidbit of information drew more gasps than the idea of Francesca dating a man fifteen years her junior who also happened to be living in the same house with her and her grandchild.

  When Hunny Clack slapped her thigh and said “Good for you, Francesca,” I don’t think she was referring to the races.

  But before anyone else could offer an opinion, Matthew piled us into the car and with a jaunty salute to his audience, we drove off.

  When we’d settled on the porch, Francesca set about opening the large box that had come clear across the ocean. Matthew used a pocket knife to cut through the twine.

  “Quel Elegance, 23 Rue des Fraises, Passy, Paris, France,” read the address on the outside of the box.

  It wasn’t heavy enough for books. Daddyboys thought books were one of the greatest treasures of the modern world.

  There were two smaller boxes inside the larger box. Both were wrapped in gold paper. The legend on one of the items read, “Quel Elegance.”

  “Ah, the aroma,” Francesca said, putting her nose up to the package. “Jasmine, not too strong.

  Both of the boxes had white embossed name cards on them, with the recipient’s name inscribed inside in hand-printed script.

  I opened the one addressed to me.

  “Look, a velvet dress. I love it,” I said excitedly. “Feel how soft! This is a dress for a princess.”

  Matt picked up a card that had fallen out of our packages.

  “It says to ‘the two prettiest women in Lost Nation,’” he read then added, “Now isn’t that the truth.”

  Francesca was holding up what I thought was a nightgown. It was the fanciest one I had ever seen: silvery and sheer, like running creek water. There wasn’t much to it, and it was see-through, which I thought was odd.

  The gown also had a robe with it that looked like butterfly wings glistening in the light.

  Francesca stroked the delicate fabric. She held it up to the light then snuck a look at Matt. He almost whistled but then seemed to think better of it.

  “Francesca, you can’t sleep in that; you’ll wreck it,” I said.

  Matt burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” I wondered.

  “Not a blasted thing, child,” Francesca said. “You have to admit, it’s the perfect costume for a boudoir.”

  Francesca carefully folded the nightgown and robe and placed them back inside their box. She asked me to take them upstairs and get ready for bed. I knew that meant she wanted to be alone with Matt.

  “Are you going to kiss again?”

  Francesca shook her head. “That’s Sarah for you.”

  This time, I actually went to bed, where Babe and I fell fast asleep.

  Chapter 14

  Healing

  I

  t was time to take Babe’s stitches out. Her wounds, including her broken leg, were mending well. It had a lot to do with my care, according to Doc Gearneart.

  “You take after your grandmother, you know. Have you ever considered becoming a veterinarian?”

  I liked Doc. He was no-nonsense when it was important and whimsical when it was important. He had mastered the gruff thing, which reminded me a little of Grandpap. And like Grandpap, he was a lot more teddy bear than grizzly.

  Later that same day, we drove to Cedar Rapids, where a specialist examined Matt’s leg. The doctor would decide if more surgery was required or if Matt would have to find a way to live with bones that would never heal.

  I pressed my nose against the front window and looked out onto the streets.

  “Babe wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you,” I offered.

  “But you had the dream and the courage to follow through on it,” Francesca said. “In a way, we all made that miracle happen.”

  I turned back to the window. “Do you think Matt will ever fly again? Will his leg get healed?”

  She put her arm around me and said nothing. I felt so safe in her embrace. Our love was as strong as ever, even though we were currently dragging it over rocky ground. As the clock ticked loudly, it occurred to me that some significant piece of her life was also on the line in that treatment room — that she was treading water hard between the devil and the deep blue sea. If Matt was healed, maybe he’d go back to flying and leave her behind. If he was crippled, he might be so bitter that their relationship couldn’t survive the strain.

  I crawled onto her lap and hugged her.

  “I love you,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I’ve been a poop. I don’t mean to be, but it seems to happen anyway.”

  “It’s alright, child. You’re just growing up.”

  “I don’t like it much.”

  “It’s hormones. You’ll soon be turning into a young woman.”

  “A crazy one?”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  The door opened, and Matt walked out. He was grinning from ear to ear.

  “I’ll have to keep using a cane for a while but no more surgeries. The bones are healing. Although, it won’t ever be one hundred percent again, I will have full use of it.”

  Francesca didn’t say a word; she seemed as tight as a bow string.

  Like an accomplished mind reader, Matt walked over and took Francesca’s cheeks gently into his hands.

  “I won’t even think about climbing into my plane unless you’re there with me, Fran. I’m going to take you up in that blue yonder and keep you there until you fall in love with it.” He then kissed her on the mouth, a long lingering kiss in front of God and everybody.

  Chapter 15

  The Trade-last

  I

  always looked forward to birthdays. We weren’t rich by any means, yet in our family, birthdays were big. The one dark cloud on an otherwise glorious horizon was the inexorable approach of Harry and Maude.

  Matt and I were whipped into a cleaning frenzy by Francesca, who had assumed the charming manners of a drill sergeant. Maude was never to see Francesca’s floors anything less than eat-on-them spotless. My knees ached, and my fingernails were worn to nubbins.

  As Matt’s leg grew stronger, his disposition positively flowered. In the face of our relentless task-mistress, he was actually cheery and took to whistling and cracking jokes. It was disgusting.

  Babe and I snuck off whenever The Eye wasn’t trained on us. In some ways, I guess my hours with Babe began to take the place of the ones I used to spend with Francesca. Between Matt, car racing and house-cleaning, my grandmother had little private time left for me, which hit me hard. And although I felt a piece of my life had been lost, there was little I could do about it.

  Instead, Babe and I spent as many snatched minutes as we could down at the fishing pond. I wasn’t to go by myself, since there was still a criminal at large, but Matt convinced Francesca it would be alright with Babe at my side. Just the same, he taught me to use a .22 caliber revolver, thereby spurring quite a debate between him and my grandmother.

  Francesca wasn’t opposed to firearms on principle. That would have been laughable for a woman who’d lived so many years on a farm. And she wasn’t opp
osed to my learning to shoot, a common practice in rural America, especially in those days. I’d hunted quail and pheasant with my dad and Grandpap a few times. Grandpap had taught me to use his lightweight .410 over-and-under when I was eight. I knew all the safety rules and put them to good use. I wasn’t a great shot, but I was competent and felt perfectly comfortable carrying and loading that gun.

  But shooting a pistol was a whole different kettle of fish.

  “I don’t know, Matt,” Francesca said with a frown. They were rubbing down Miss Blossom and Redbird.

  “I’d feel a hell of a lot better knowing Sarah had some real protection. It’s not practical for you and me to be watching over her every second. As a matter of fact,” he continued, scratching Blossom’s chin, “it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to carry something, my dear.”

  And so Matt bought Francesca and me each a small pistol and taught us how to use them. He’d set up bottles across the top of the old split-rail fence, and we’d blast away.

  “Squeeze. Don’t jerk your arms like that; you’ll pull right off the target. That’s better. Slow and steady.”

  I wasn’t supposed to actually shoot anyone; the gun was there primarily for show and as an alarm system. I never played with it or pointed it at anyone or anything except the practice bottles. Francesca would have skinned me alive. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I could’ve fired the weapon in my own defense, but I wouldn’t hesitate to protect Babe.

  Babe and I lay on the bank of the pond in the shade with our faces near the water. I could see our reflections swirling. It was humid but not unbearably so. Babe had her head across the back of my legs, and I was about to feed her a piece of carrot when I heard a voice from behind. It startled me, and I sat up.

  “I thought I’d find you here.”

  It was Francesca.

  I figured she’d come to drag me back to the salt mines, but instead, she put her hand gently and firmly on my shoulder, pushing me back onto the ground. She sat down beside us and trailed her fingers in the water for a while.

  “I’ve got a T.L. for you, Sarah.” That was all she said for a while.

  Where I come from, a T.L. was supposedly a cowboy term that was shorthand for trade-last. It was something of great value, a story or a secret that you held back when you were bantering with someone across a campfire or sipping coffee in the kitchen. It might be a compliment or a bit of gossip. But you held it until the end, in an effort to persuade the other person to give up something extra-special first. It was the thing you traded last.

  I waited.

  “I’ve been like this about Maude since I was sixteen years old,” she began. “I … I can’t help myself. Whatever it is, it drives me.”

  She began to dig tiny stones out of the embankment and added, “It isn’t actually Maude at all, you know. It’s Harry — dear, sweet, bullheaded Harry.”

  I wisely held back the gasp that was stuck in my throat. The subject of Francesca and Maude’s falling out was never to be discussed in our house.

  “It wasn’t really Maude’s fault, no matter how I’ve blamed her this long time.”

  She shook her head, then lay back and rested it against a log. She gazed upward, as though for help or guidance, into the kind of sky she loved more than any other, a buttermilk sky. The clouds looked fluffy and slightly curdled. Then, she closed her eyes for a long time, and just when I thought she had fallen asleep, she spoke again.

  “I’ve been trying to sort out these confused feelings about Matthew, you know. All my life, I have acted as though I cared very little for the opinions of other people. Maybe that was all sham.” She sighed. “Faced with an opportunity to practice what I preach, I’m stuck but good.”

  She sat up then and folded her knees gracefully into her arms. Her face was turned away from me, but her shoulders were as expressive as her eyes would have been.

  “Harry and I … God, it was so many years ago. I loved that man. Still do. Not any more than I loved Cox, I think, but differently. First love is a powerful force in a person’s life.”

  I clapped my hand over my mouth. Yowie-zowie!

  “But Harry and I were so unlike in some ways. He was … still is … much more conservative than I. He had a … a different set of scruples.”

  She thought a moment before going on.

  “I wanted to … I asked if we could … You see?” she asked, without turning her head back to me.

  Not really.

  Francesca let me think about this for a moment. I had lived on a farm all my life, after all, and knew a lot about animal behavior. I was familiar with terms that could be used in mixed company like “procreate” or “beget” (Grandpap’s favorite). When it came to men and women, I had overheard this and that and seen my parents be affectionate with and to one another. And I could reference the movies I’d seen.

  “Hmmmm,” I nodded finally, “like kissing and hugging.”

  She seemed relieved. “Exactly like kissing and hugging. And when I told him, he was … shocked first, then angry. He didn’t speak to me for a long time after that.” She hung her head. “I was crushed and heartbroken. Within a matter of weeks, he and Maude had made plans to marry.”

  Francesca stretched back out along the edge of the pond. One small tear fell from the corner of her right eye.

  “I wasn’t wrong. For myself, I mean. I know that now. Actually, I knew it then. And neither was he wrong. In fact, about a year after he and Maude were married, he apologized. Said he’d wished he hadn’t been so prissy and stupid about the whole thing. That he loved me and always would. That he thought it was best if he and Maude moved to Des Moines, as their marriage might have a fighting chance away from me.”

  Francesca had begun to really cry. Her waterworks had been shut off at the source on this subject for over forty years. Now, they turned back on with a vengeance.

  “But I never let him make peace with me,” she sobbed. “Not really. Eventually, the sadness disappeared, and anger … bitterness took its place.”

  She turned to face me then. “Don’t think for a moment I figured this out sitting here. I’m not nearly that smart. I’ve been wrestling with this heaviness in my heart for most of a lifetime. Sometimes, the anger still wells up and overflows, like Old Faithful, and I do mean old.”

  She reached out for me and hugged me till I thought she’d break my ribs. It was wonderful and terrible and scary.

  I kissed her and told her everything would be all right. I stroked her hair and told her I loved her. It was the first inkling I ever got of the grown-up and the child changing places. I felt her shivering and held her tight.

  Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore and not really knowing what to say, I blurted out, “Does this mean we can stop cleaning now?”

  Suddenly, Francesca began laughing her head off. She cuffed me softly on the ear and took a deep breath.

  “I guess we could give it a rest,” she gasped.

  I had never seen her in such agony and probably didn’t respond the way she had needed. But as deep as this secret had proved to be, Francesca had more.

  “That wasn’t the trade-last,” Francesca said, surprising me and making me feel somewhat uncomfortable.

  “Oh, Lord,” I said.

  Francesca sniffled and looked me straight in the eye. It was the most uncomfortable feeling, looking into her soul like that.

  “I love Matthew Mosley.”

  I nodded dumbly, feeling relieved, resentful and betrayed at the same time.

  “But don’t you see?” she said, shaking me, “More than anyone else ever. More than Cox. More than Harry. And I’m too old! Too old!”

  She crumbled against me, all the wind and pride and hope knocked out of her. I hadn’t an idea in the world what to say. I knew there weren’t any words in the Oxford English Dictionary that would make a difference. What if she were right? I didn’t think she was that much older than Matt, but what did I really know about such things?

  I wondere
d how Matt felt. My experience told me that Francesca wasn’t one to worry unless there was something important to worry about.

  Francesca went on in a rush. “What if Matthew’s regained health fires up his wanderlust? He’ll be gone in a flash.”

  Childhood doesn’t prepare you for these types of moments. We were having a very adult conversation. But I loved my grandmother and wanted to help her. I figured the least I could do was listen.

  I felt her pain go right through me. I wished like anything it could have been me suffering. It was maddening to feel so helpless.

  Babe behaved perfectly through the storm, being comforting in a manner only dogs can manage. She licked away Francesca’s tears and tried to curl up on her lap. Looking back, I wished I’d thought of something so simple and appropriate.

  The sun crawled across the sky, and the day cooled down.

  “I love you, Sarah. I never told anyone these things before. I had to tell someone and … you’re a part of my soul.”

  I kissed Francesca’s hair, the way I did in the morning sometimes.

  “You had to give me your trade-last, because I’m your Sweetchild!”

  It was all I could think of to answer, but it filled the air between us like a train whistle blowing.

  Suddenly, I sprang to my feet and ran straight into the water, with Babe right behind.

  “I beat you in! I beat you!”

  With that, Francesca put one hand on her hip and waggled the first finger of the other at me.

  “You took advantage of my weakened condition, and I am going to get you!”

  She dove into the pond with all her clothes on, including her shoes. She chased me and Babe around and around, and then she grabbed my legs and tickled my feet until I shouted, “Uncle!”

  Chapter 16

  Taking Chances

  I

  t was a relief to lay down the mop, the broom and the scrub brush. After our heart-to-heart at the fishing pond, Francesca’s behavior veered 180 degrees. I had never thought of her as a rock; she had always seemed too elegant to be cut out of stone. But some part of her inner self had shifted and softened.