Crossing the Tracks (9781416997054)

by Stuber, Barbara

  “They’re hardier than they seem,” Mrs. Nesbitt remarks.

  We walk to a huge elm in the front yard that has an old spring wagon seat on a frame under it. We are surrounded by a brilliant green lawn. Mrs. Nesbitt props Henry against the trunk, steps out of her slippers, and pats the plank seat. “Morris made this.”

  I drain the watering can into a little stone birdbath.

  “If you don’t mind, let’s sit together awhile,” she says.

  Wavy heat rises around us, but under the tree it’s surprisingly pleasant. “Our house looks interesting from this point of view, don’t you think? It’s revealing to look at it, rather than from it.” Mrs. Nesbitt waves her Japanese fan. “Inside it’s… divided—all walls and doors—but this way it looks whole and sturdy. I should come out here every day.”

  Leaf patterns swim across the pale gray stucco. The storm cellar door is choked shut by roots—Mother Nature’s lock. I think how easily, how kindly they have folded me into their house.

  Dr. Nesbitt’s office, with its outside entrance, looks added on. We talk about the patients who have come there the past few weeks—the screaming six-year-old boy who had stepped on a fishhook. I tell how I tried to keep his mother calm while Dr. Nesbitt pushed the hook through and cut off the barb. Or the night a man and his wife showed up. He claimed she had “turned into a mannequin,” wouldn’t move—a “possession by Satan.” She sat on the passenger seat unblinking while the husband poured his frustration out on us. “Your wife needs help at the state hospital,” Dr. Nesbitt had said as kindly as any human could.

  I study the long front-room windows. She has yet to suggest we clean the parlor, even though it’s caked with dust. I’ve never seen Dr. Nesbitt’s bedroom, but knowing him, he scours it before he goes to bed every night.

  “The house is really filling up,” Mrs. Nesbitt says. “Avery and me, you, Marie, Henry.”

  “Don’t forget my wallpaper goddesses.”

  Mrs. Nesbitt claps. “Yes! That’s what I mean. The house is filling up!”

  The windmill squeaks. A woodpecker rat-a-tat-tats against the garage shingles. Without warning four words march out of my mouth. “My father is engaged.”

  We watch a blue jay swoop the birdbath, bully a wet sparrow into the elm. I hop up. “Shoo! Shoo!”

  “That’s important news, Iris.”

  “I guess. Her name’s Celeste.” So much for my month of silence.

  “When will they marry?” she asks softly.

  “He didn’t say.”

  For some reason Mama pops into my head. I imagine her here with us, listening and shaking her head for poor, unsuspecting Celeste. But why do I think she’d do that? What if Mama was actually just like Celeste, or any of Daddy’s other girlfriends? I have no way of knowing. I squash that black thought.

  “Do you know Celeste well?”

  “Celeste? No!” I can only imagine what Mrs. Nesbitt must be thinking of me. My, Iris certainly sounds stand-offish. She should be happy for her father. What has she done to have such a poor relationship with him?

  And that is one thing I truly have no answer for—what have I done or not done?

  Mrs. Nesbitt gazes at me a long moment. “Then Celeste must not know you very well either.”

  Crows fuss at each other on our phone wire.

  “What’s your father like, dear?”

  “Uh… he drives too fast… he hates coughing because it sounds like tuberculosis, and he hates cheap shoes, and…” It sounds like trivial nothing. My heart twists on itself. I need another goddess bath. “He never talks about himself, so I…”

  “Do you take after your father, Iris?”

  “No!”

  She covers my hand with hers. “Do you take after your mother, then?”

  “Oh, yes,” I lie, staring in my lap. “Yes, I do.”

  That night in bed, my thoughts dart and bump like sparrows flown down the chimney.

  I try to move Celeste easily and kindly into our Atchison house, but I get only as far as the porch swing. The thought of her acting lovey-dovey with my father on the divan is horrible. So are her knickknacks, her powerful perfume, her giggle. How can she like him?

  There’s no moon tonight. The room is so dark, I can’t tell if my eyes are open or not, but I can see Celeste bringing Daddy sugar cubes for his coffee, straightening his collar, hanging new pictures, moving our furniture.

  I can’t recall Mama’s laugh or her saying “I love you,” or “Change your socks,” or “Let’s play jacks.” Nothing. Daddy closed her memory with her coffin. I don’t remember anything we did together except blink-talk. I have only one or two of Mama’s things hibernating in that house until I get back in September. And now here comes Celeste to rearrange them.

  And what, I wonder, am I supposed to call her when she’s sitting all dolled up and perky at the breakfast table after spending the night in my father’s bedroom?

  “Do I just say, oh, good morning, Mother?”

  Nope.

  She is not the mother type. She is not my type, no matter what I call her.

  I repeat “Mother.” Just a pop of my lips, a thrust of my tongue, and there it is—a perfect little pair of syllables hanging together in the air. “Mother.” The voice belongs to me, but the word doesn’t. It belongs to everybody but me. “Mother” slides out of Dr. Nesbitt’s mouth as easily as “please” and “thank you.”

  I practice it a few times—softly, like the little girl on the train with her play-act family.

  I tilt it up in a question. “Mother?”

  I stamp it sternly on the air. “Mother!”

  I singsong it. “Mo-ther.”

  I whisper it out the window, yell it in my pillow, float it like smoke.

  “Mo… ther… mo… ther… mo… ther… moth…”

  I pour it out to the black night, until finally, the syllables get tired and fall apart.

  CHAPTER 9

  “What make of car do you drive, Dr. Nesbitt?” I ask at breakfast early Saturday morning. I feel dumb. All I know is that his automobile is black, but that won’t answer my father’s question.

  “Ford Model T Tudor Sedan.” Dr. Nesbitt mops up the yolk of his poached egg with a piece of toast. “Do you drive?”

  “Me? Oh no, sir.” I cut the stems and put three strawberries on Mrs. Nesbitt’s plate.

  A breeze ruffles the curtains. Dr. Nesbitt glances out. “Looks clear today. After I do the lawn, I’ll teach you.” He rinses his plate in the sink, gives his mother and me a nod, and heads out to the garage for the mower.

  Mrs. Nesbitt looks at me, surprised. She shakes her head in a phony lament. “Oh, boy, a whole afternoon spent stirring up the roads. We’ll be dusting for weeks!”

  I picture myself spinning dirt devils out of the exhaust pipe. I smile, but truly, I’d rather be dusting than driving. You can’t kill anybody with a dustcloth.

  By lunchtime my stomach is a knot.

  In the driveway Dr. Nesbitt insists I sit in the driver’s seat. “We will begin,” he says in a serious way, “with the three easiest driving skills to master. Number one: stalling the engine. Number two: getting stuck in a ditch. And number three: getting lost.” He looks at me without cracking a grin. “Which’ll it be?”

  “How about going backward when you mean to go forward,” I say with a laugh that sounds more than slightly hysterical.

  The seat is hard and high. For the first time in my life I’m glad to be gangly. We review the foot pedals: gears on the left, reverse in the middle, and engine brake on the right. “Driving is much easier for folks with three legs,” Dr. Nesbitt remarks. We review the two levers on either side of the steering wheel and the two on the floor. “And four arms.”

  After a string of directions, I start the engine. The car jumps to life. I inhale so sharply I choke. I am petrified. What’s a “Tudor Sedan” anyway? A booby trap? Over the engine noise Dr. Nesbitt says to press the left pedal to the floor for low gear. Next he says to adjust
the throttle. Throttle? My hands flutter up and down. Throttle… throttle… I spot it! Okay. I move the right steering wheel lever to “give her a little gas.” Mrs. Nesbitt waves Henry at us from the back porch. Our tires spray gravel. “Get out of the way,” I scream at the chickens as we buck forward.

  “Now brake,” Dr. Nesbitt says, calm as can be.

  I press the right pedal. We stall out. I exhale for what seems like the first time in hours. Panting, I turn to Dr. Nesbitt with my mouth hanging open.

  “Well done, Iris. You mastered skill number one on the first try.”

  I learn neutral and reverse and quite a bit about horsepower and flat tires and electric starters versus the old crank style. Dr. Nesbitt tells how he used to treat drivers with a “Ford Fracture”—the broken arm they got when a crank starter accidentally spun the wrong way.

  I’ve sweated through my dress again. My shoulders ache from being hunched to my ears. My fingers won’t release from the steering wheel. Mrs. Nesbitt watches from the porch, smiling and waving like we are her children going round and round on a carnival ride. Poor Marie is pooped. She’s worn a strip in the grass trying to chase us.

  I turn off the ignition and mop my forehead. I have been driving now for almost two hours and we haven’t left the driveway.

  “At least we didn’t get lost,” I say.

  Dr. Nesbitt smiles. “You seem like a natural, Iris, truly. In a few days you’ll have this car climbing telephone poles.”

  I get out and slam the door. “Yes, sir… in reverse.”

  June 17, 1926

  Dear Leroy,

  Dr. Nesbitt is teaching me to drive! It’s actually fun. Maybe I take after Daddy a little—but not his reckless, show-off style.

  Driving is lots easier than cooking, which is something I can’t steer away from any longer. Help! The other night when we faced another sloppy bowl of limp cucumbers floating in vinegar, Mrs. Nesbitt said, “Why can’t any of the good cooks in Wellsford get sick.”

  With a cookbook and Mrs. Nesbitt’s help I’ve learned biscuits, oatmeal (big deal), and creamed corn, but so far, when I’m through the kitchen mostly smells like scorched potholders.

  When you visit (I think the Nesbitts would say it’s okay) we’ll take a chicken coop tour. I’m in charge of it now. No admission fee. Pee-yew and UGH… hens are crabby. I wonder if the art of cooking includes choking your own chickens?

  The girl at the farm “next door” has it out for me. Her name is Dot.

  Dot = hen + snapping turtle.

  Her mama’s gone. Dot claims she passed on, but really she ran off because her husband hit her. What’s worse—having your mama disappear in the middle of the night or pass on? I say getting left high and dry is worse. Maybe that’s why Dot’s so mean.

  Another “ugh”—Daddy is engaged to Celeste Simmons. I should have seen it coming. Everybody in Atchison already knows, right? Celeste is the opposite of Dot—too cuddly, with a giant helping of phony. Maybe she won’t last, just like all his other lady friends. I swear I am not going to think about it.

  Thank you for the postcard. If you don’t want the chickens and everyone else in the world to read them before I do, try a letter in an envelope.

  I miss you a whole lot—so there.

  ILB

  P.S. Please come. Chicken tour is optional.

  On Sunday, while most folks are at church, I’m back in the driver’s seat. Dr. Nesbitt’s wearing old work pants and a straw hat. “It’s time to hit the road,” he says. I don’t tell him how last night when I couldn’t sleep I drove sitting on a dining room chair. The goddesses thought I was a talking octopus.

  I start the car and adjust the levers and pedals. We glide down the driveway. Thankfully I avoid picking off the telephone pole and the mailbox, and then I make such a sharp left turn, I wheel us in a complete circle. As we buck and hump along I feel sure an octopus could drive better than me. “I’m sorry,” I say without taking my eyes from the road. “I hope I don’t shake your teeth out.”

  Dr. Nesbitt is quiet a long moment. “Years ago, right before my father died, he taught Mother to drive. Dad insisted on it, knowing she’d have to be independent. I can still see them cruising around our old neighborhood—Morris and me cheering her from the curb. She needed a big pillow at her back so she could reach the pedals. Once you learn, Iris, I hope you two will get out.” He smiles. “Do the town!”

  We pass a walnut orchard and a thin dirt road leading to a white box farmhouse surrounded by trees. It seems to spin slowly to watch us go by. I steer around the Rawleigh man’s yellow medicine buggy and an abandoned truck with two flat tires.

  “If Mother were here, she’d insist we get out and dust it,” Dr. Nesbitt remarks.

  A horse and wagon lope ahead of us in the distance. My heart stops.

  Okay.

  Think.

  Which is the brake… find the brake pedal and the parking brake. Just slow down a bit. Don’t stall. My mind’s running faster than the car. Where’s the horn? Where’s the horn?

  Oh, God. It’s Cecil and Dot.

  They stop. I creep up and stall inches behind them. From the corner of my eye I see Dr. Nesbitt press an imaginary brake pedal on the passenger side.

  Cecil nudges Dot. They swivel around on the seat to face us. “Well, well. What have we here?” I clench the steering wheel, brace for Dr. Nesbitt to put me on the spot, make some smart remarks about my driving—either a brag, Iris is a whiz behind the wheel, or a snide Good thing we stalled, it’s the only way Iris can stop this thing. But the real Dr. Nesbitt looks from Dot to Cecil to me without saying a word.

  I sit straighter, adjust my sleeves, and watch Dot size things up. Her eyes are wary, not piggy like her father’s. I wonder if he sees Pansy every time he looks at her. Dot curls her lip ever so subtly at me, then smiles at Dr. Nesbitt. I know she’s busy twisting this moment into a string of nasty remarks.

  Cecil spits. “Et looks like your horsey stalled out on you, Miss Baldwin.”

  I don’t answer. Cecil’s mare pees in the dirt.

  Dr. Nesbitt asks, “What about that old horsey you bought, Cecil? Is that rusted Chevy you’re always tinkering with still on the fritz?”

  “You know I prefer ree-al horsepower,” says Cecil, with what is supposed to be a charming country bumpkin tone. He squeezes Dot’s knee. “I told my girl, ‘A horse’ll stop at a barbed-wire fence. But, I ask you, will a car?’” Cecil gets a self-satisfied expression, as though he’s the first person to be born with brains. “A car will drive right off a bluff, but will a horse?” He folds his arms.

  “I don’t know as I can say,” Dr. Nesbitt remarks. “I’ve never seen a horse drive a car.”

  “I guess we’ll have to save getting lost for another day,” he says as we pull up our long driveway and stop. We have churned the dust on dozens of county roads. I’ve learned how to stop without stalling. I no longer head straight into every ditch. I’m getting reverse, and I even wormed around a Sunday driver who was pokier than me.

  Dr. Nesbitt turns to me with a nice smile and asks, “So, Iris, how are you doing?”

  I blurt out, “Besides seeing the Deets… I mean… sorry, but anyway… it’s been the best afternoon of my life!”

  Dr. Nesbitt salutes me with his hat. “Do you learn everything this fast?”

  “Driving maybe, but not cooking.” I smile. “Thank you for teaching me.”

  We make a deal to practice before supper every evening until I can go by myself. Dr. Nesbitt gets out, stretches, and kicks the tires.

  I stay in the driver’s seat for a moment. In my mind I see a ribbon of road rolling away from me, like when I was little staring backward out the car window. A feeling leaps in me, a surge toward something—I don’t know what. Driving is like nothing else on earth. I’m not terrible at it. In fact, I love it. I can’t believe it, but I do.

  But, by far, the very best part of the whole day was just now, when Dr. Nesbitt turned and asked me how I was
doing rather than telling me.

  CHAPTER 10

  Mrs. Nesbitt and I cruise through Wellsford with Henry and Marie, the backseat full of supplies: chicken scratch from the feed store; Borax, coffee, evaporated milk, cornmeal, ink, and Wrigley’s Gum from Fly’s Dry Goods; my silent purchase; and a tank of propane for the range. We have an hour before we pick up Dr. Nesbitt at his office.

  Mrs. Nesbitt looks regal in her earrings and embroidered coat. She waves at two little farm boys on the curb. “We need some climbing roses like those,” she says over the engine noise, motioning with crumpled fingers toward a brilliant red trellis the color of her jacket. The owner of the roses swings her watering can at us. Marie yaps hello.

  Dr. Nesbitt knows everybody here—inside and out. But I wonder what people think of the three of us “ladies” out on the town without him. I steer past the Presbyterian Church and cemetery and away from the busy Saturday morning streets.

  I am truly not nervous driving. In fact, it beats riding any day. I keep the church steeple in sight as we slide past farmhouses under a lace coverlet of cottonwood shadows. Out of the corner of my eye even the purple hollyhocks—privy flowers—bunched around a lonesome outhouse look royal. We pass a spiny brown ridge that reminds me of Marie’s back when she first arrived, scrubby and starved. The wind explores the morning, fills my sleeves, twirls up my skirt, ruffles the robins, then switches destinations, and so do we.

  As we crest a hill I feel the earth release us, then hug us tight going down. Emerald corn fields rustle under the scalloped telephone wires. I hear rivers of clover hum the same soft pink note. Everything is moving, talking, touching above and rooted below. I slow to let a garden snake show off his swivel dance across the dusty road. Mrs. Nesbitt pats my arm.

  Something brand-new hums in me too. I think it is joy.

  “Thank you. Thank you… I love you,” I tell the mailbox. “Finally, a real, private letter from Leroy!” I squeeze the envelope. It’s fat, at least two pages. My name looks gorgeous written with his pen. I scout around for a private place to read, and decide on Morris’s bench.