Westminster West

by Jessie Haas

  Slowly, slowly the falling leaves in her head all landed. She opened her eyes. Minnie was dusting the blue glass bowl on the mantel. She flicked the feather duster over it skillfully, carefully, and only when she was finished did she turn for an anxious look at Sue. “Oh! Are you all right?”

  “I think so.” The parlor, with its carpet, chairs, ornaments, and whatnots, seemed full and complex. Sue felt a moment’s longing for her upstairs room, bare as a nun’s cell, with the red book for a Bible—the book! With Sue out of the bed, Mother would want to turn the mattress, and she would find it.

  “Minnie. Come here?” Minnie came closer. “Under my mattress there’s a diary.” Curiosity flared in Minnie’s eyes. “Would you hide it in my closet? And if you dare look—”

  Minnie grinned impishly. “Susie! Would I do a thing like that?” She ran upstairs. When she came back, she had Sue’s small knitting basket, the needles stuck into the ball of yarn and the sleeve of a blue jersey hanging from them. She put the knitting by the sofa, within easy reach. As she bent down, she whispered, “In your boot!”

  As the afternoon advanced, Sue couldn’t imagine going back to her room. It was such a pleasure simply to watch Minnie dust the parlor and to see Mother a dozen times within an hour: to see Mother by random chance, to see Mother when she was thinking of something besides Sue’s illness.

  After supper everyone gathered: Ed at the piano, Henry with The Agriculturalist, while Father, spectacles astride his nose, went over some town accounts. Minnie and Sue played cribbage, but as Father closed his books, Minnie suddenly asked, “Mr. Gorham? Do the selectmen know yet if the schoolhouse fire was set?”

  Father looked over his spectacles, and Mother shot a worried glance at Sue, as if expecting to see her fall to the floor in a fit of hysterics. Henry’s eyes brightened.

  “The selectmen won’t say,” he told her. “But it can’t be anything else. Lightning doesn’t strike out of a clear blue sky!”

  Father looked for a moment as if he disagreed, as if he had seen lightning act that way, as if disaster should never be unexpected. It was the briefest expression. Sue thought maybe she imagined it. He said only, “We don’t have proof either way.”

  “When you’ve had three fires set, you don’t call the fourth an accident unless you have proof otherwise,” Henry said.

  “I don’t see that the school fits the pattern,” Ed said. “The others were barn fires, and the barns belonged to prosperous people—”

  “That’s what I told Papa,” Minnie said. “He’s just too poor to be of any interest to this fellow!”

  “Could you say the Drislanes are prosperous?” Sue asked, with a strong sense of excitement and pleasure. Something had broken open; they were talking beyond the limits Mother usually set.

  “I don’t know why not,” Minnie said. “Looks like a pretty comfortable place to me. If we went to Catholic church and saw them in their Sunday best, we’d probably know how prosperous they are!”

  “Pat Drislane’s a good farmer,” Father said. “They do all right.”

  “But what about the school?” Sue asked. “That belongs to everybody, rich or poor.”

  “You can say that,” Minnie said. “Or you can look at the people concerned with running it, and they’re the same ones who run everything and have the good farms.”

  A little silence fell in the parlor. Sue looked from Henry’s brooding face to Ed’s, full of mischievous awareness, to Mother’s.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Minnie said. “I didn’t mean—”

  “If the boot fits, wear it!” Ed said, and Henry looked up seriously.

  “Minnie’s right. The school is part of it.”

  But the school was so close, only a few hundred yards from the end of their field. If they had known it was burning, they could have seen it. The Drislanes’ farm was a quarter mile up the hill, the Campbells’ a half mile down …

  “Ed,” Mother said, “play another song.”

  After the lamps were blown out, Minnie said from the next room, “Susie? Are you asleep yet?”

  “No.”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything,” Minnie said.

  “What? About the fires? That’s all right.”

  “Your mother didn’t like it. You’re supposed to have rest and quiet.”

  “I’ve had about all the rest and quiet I can stand,” Sue said.

  Minnie laughed, and the bed in the next room jounced. “This is nice, isn’t it? Laying here talking?”

  “Yes,” Sue said, stretching on the couch. “Yes, this is nice.”

  14

  THE NEXT MORNING Sue awakened at five-thirty, as Minnie tried to slip silently through the room. She lay through the gray dawn, listening. Father and the boys went out to the barn. The cows came in. The merinos baaed imperiously. Bright nickered, and with the three other horses was brought in from the night pasture and given oats.

  Someone split kindling for the stove. I like splitting kindling, Sue thought, and she wondered if Clare had learned to do that chore. After a while breakfast smells drifted into the front parlor, and she began to feel hungry. It seemed to take forever for chores to be finished and the milk brought in and finally for Minnie to come with the tray.

  “Oh! You’re awake!”

  “Yes.” Sue lay against the pillow, waiting for the tray to be placed on her stomach.

  “Don’t you want to sit up?” Minnie asked. “I don’t see how a person can swallow oatmeal laying down. Here.” She put the tray on a chair, and before Sue knew what was happening, she was being propped upright, her feet actually over the edge of the sofa, actually touching the floor. There was nothing to rest her head against. Her neck had to stiffen and bear the whole weight by itself. For a moment it felt too weak. She had to will her muscles to tighten and make her neck into the strong column it had always been.

  “There!” Minnie said. “I’ll just tuck a shawl around you and run get my own tray.”

  Sue sat there alone. The bowl of oatmeal steamed before her.

  In a moment Minnie was back, Mother behind her.

  “Sue! Sitting up?”

  “I was afraid she’d choke on her oatmeal,” Minnie said. “I know I would if I ate laying down.”

  “I wish you’d support your head,” Mother said. “I’m still afraid you’ve injured your spine.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sue murmured. Without her pillows she felt like a flower on a long, weak stem, in danger of collapsing in the middle. But if she collapsed, Minnie would be blamed. Very carefully she reached for the tray and brought a spoonful of oatmeal to her mouth, keeping her head perfectly still. Nothing happened. The spirit level did not register a tilt, and the oatmeal was hot and sweet with maple sugar.

  “Don’t sit up long,” Mother said. “I don’t want you to overdo it the first time.”

  “The first time?” Minnie said. “Oh, I didn’t realize—”

  “It’s all right,” Sue said. She finished her whole breakfast sitting up, and she sat up again for lunch and supper.

  With Minnie there, Sue felt like a vacationer. After breakfast the house emptied, and she read or knitted, listening to sounds of work from the kitchen. Then dinner. The best fruits and berries were saved for Sue, as if she were a cherished guest. A nap, a game of cards, a cup of tea and a chat with Minnie, then supper.

  Evenings they had music, gossip, and stories, with a cast of characters that spanned a century. Westminster West had long been tamed, but under Minnie’s influence wolves and bears rampaged again. The Yorkers marched through to confrontation at the courthouse. Mills and taverns sprang up at the corner of the West road, flourished, faded, and sank into their cellar holes.

  One evening midway through Minnie’s stay Father and Henry went to a meeting about rebuilding the school. Ed stayed home to play the piano, and Minnie turned pages for him.

  He finished his sonata, and leaned back with his head on one side to give her a killingly sentimental look. Then he dropped into
the old war tune “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” playing softly and sweetly, settling his breath to sing.

  But as the stanza ended, Minnie suddenly turned from the piano. “Mrs. Gorham, what was it really like when they came home?”

  Sue’s needle stabbed into her finger. Mother’s knitting slowly sank toward her lap. Ed smiled to himself and sang very softly,

  “The village lads and lassies say,

  With roses they will strew the way,

  And we’ll all

  feel

  gay

  when

  Johnny comes marching home.”

  After a long moment Mother said, “Well, I don’t remember strewing any roses.”

  Minnie persisted. “But was it like the song? Was the whole town happy?”

  Mother was about to turn the question aside; Sue could see it in her face. But Minnie went on. “I’ve always thought it must have been the most joyful time.”

  If that had been true, Mother would have said nothing. But the chance to correct a mistake was irresistible. “It was hard to be joyful. Too many didn’t come home, and they surely didn’t march, not all of them. Poor Otis Buxton was at death’s door nearly a year. Tolman Coombs was hurt and came home to a son who would never be right—”

  “But you must have been joyful,” Minnie said. She sat down with her own knitting, but she hardly needed to glance at it. She watched Mother hopefully. The muted piano underlay the silence. Sue barely breathed, waiting.

  “I remember … how brown he was,” Mother said at last. “And thin. You wouldn’t think a Vermont farm boy could get any leaner, but all that marching just whittled them down.” After a pause she added, “He’d barely been inside a house in four years. I remember his eyes looked very pale and wild.”

  “Did you get married as soon as he came back?”

  Slowly Mother’s needles began to click again. “Soon afterward,” she said, and Sue let her breath out. Of course Mother would not tell the real story. That was meant to be forgotten. For a minute or two the only sound was the soft piano notes.

  Then Mother said, “They’d ‘seen the elephant.’ That’s what they said. They hardly knew how to talk to anyone who wasn’t there. And they couldn’t imagine that we’d seen a few elephants, too.”

  “What do you think I am?” For the first time Sue put herself on Mother’s side of the garden gate. She had seen her dearest friend die. Did that compare with going to war? I don’t know, Sue thought.

  Mother’s face wore its usual calm, authoritative expression. Behind that what was she remembering? Those well-known public events—the war, the deaths—had this shadowy private dimension that Sue had never suspected and that affected everything. A shiver ran down her back, and she wrapped the afghan more closely around her.

  15

  TOWARD THE END OF THE SECOND WEEK Minnie picked blackberries, and the next morning she and Mother sat on the step sorting them.

  The big front door was open. From the couch Sue could just see the side of Minnie’s face, and her hands, red and black from the juice.

  “I could sort some,” she called.

  “Not on my good sofa and my good carpet, you couldn’t!” Mother called back gaily. It was that kind of morning, crisp and cool, with a brilliant white, clear light over everything.

  As Mother turned back to the berries, Sue saw behind her the shifting green leaves of the maple and the bright sky showing through. A swallow dived. The gray cat arched herself against Minnie’s side. I want to be out there, Sue thought.

  Without even thinking about it, she stood up. Clare’s white afghan fell around her feet. She stepped over it.

  Minnie looked up. “Susie!”

  Sue took another step. Her legs felt weak, as if her bones had turned to water. Her knees were going to fold.…

  Mother’s form filled the bright doorway and blackened it. An arm around her waist, helping—

  No. Helping her onto the sofa again.

  “Susan Gorham, what on earth do you think you’re doing? You can hardly sit up, let alone walk!” Mother pressed her against the sofa’s back, and Sue laughed weakly as her strength collapsed before Mother’s.

  “Now for goodness sake, stay there! If you want to sort berries that badly, we’ll put newspaper down on the carpet and let you!”

  “Don’t you think—” Minnie began in a troubled voice, but she didn’t go on.

  “Does your Mother want you to be an invalid?”

  In the dark, from their beds, Minnie and Sue could say anything to each other. Nonetheless, Sue felt an inner squirm at this. “Of course not. She wants me to get well.”

  “She put you back on that sofa quick enough!”

  “She was worried!”

  “I’m worried, too, but I’d have walked you out to the step if you were my child.”

  “Minnie!”

  “Maybe she likes having someone to nurse,” Minnie said. “It’s enough to make me want to be sick, the way she takes care of you.”

  “I don’t know what else she could do!”

  “Make it harder,” Minnie said promptly. “Be cross. That’s what my mother would do, God bless her!”

  With difficulty Sue smoothed the irritation out of her voice. “Minnie, Mother—Mother had to nurse her own cousin until she died, when she was only a little older than we are. It makes her worry more when one of us is sick—”

  “So that’s why she lets Clare lay around the way she does!” Minnie said, on a note of triumph. “I always wondered—”

  “Lie around!” Sue said sharply. “Not lay, lie!” She wanted to defeat the avid, curious note in Minnie’s voice. If Minnie brought gossip in, she could take gossip away.

  There was a long pause. Then Minnie said, “If my grammar isn’t good enough for you, Sue Gorham, I don’t have to speak at all!”

  Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Finally Sue said, “This is stupid!”

  “Is it? But you don’t think it’s stupid to lie on your couch and let your mother pretend you’re sick!”

  “I was sick!”

  “But you’re better! Aren’t you? Don’t you think you should be getting up and walking? If she won’t let you—hey!” The anger dropped out of Minnie’s voice, replaced by excitement. “Why don’t you get up now? I’ll help! You can practice at night till you’re steady on your feet, and then you can show her—”

  “I’m going to sleep,” Sue said, hunching her shoulder and pushing her head into the pillow.

  “Oh, come on, Sue! Don’t go to bed mad!”

  “I’m not mad,” Sue muttered. “I’m angry!” She heard a quick, sharp breath from the other room, and then nothing more.

  The next day was Sunday, and Sue awakened late. Minnie had gone through the parlor in complete silence. At breakfast time she brought in only one tray. A moment later Sue heard her in the kitchen. “I’ll eat out here this morning, Mrs. Gorham.”

  That brought Mother in a few minutes later. “Susan, is there some trouble between you and Minnie?”

  Sue felt herself blush. “No, I—I have a little headache.”

  Instantly she wished she hadn’t said it. Mother felt her brow, brought chamomile tea, insisted she lie down, and tucked her in an extra shawl. She could hardly bring herself to leave for church until Sue professed to feel much better.

  When they were gone, Minnie came in with her Bible. Sue opened her own, and they sat in silence. Sue stared at the fishhooks and squiggles that were supposed to make words. After a few minutes she realized that Minnie had not yet turned a page.

  This is stupid, she thought. All because Minnie was right … almost right. “Minnie?”

  Minnie stared at her Bible as if absorbed, slowly turned the page, and then looked up, with apparent reluctance. “Yes?”

  Sue couldn’t bring herself to apologize. Instead she said, “You could help me walk now. Would you?”

  A slow, deep flush rose in Minnie’s cheeks. She moved the red marker and closed the Bib
le. “All right.” Sue sat up, Minnie put a strong arm around her waist, and they stood up together.

  Too sudden. Sue felt the light drain out of her head, and she collapsed on the couch again.

  “Slower next time,” Minnie said. They rested a moment. Then slowly they rose. Sue swayed, and braced her legs, and waited. She felt as tall as Abraham Lincoln, light-headed with altitude. But she was on her feet.

  “Minnie?” Her voice came in a gasp.

  “What?” Minnie asked.

  “Minnie, I was a pig last night. I’m sorry.” She could apologize to Minnie. She could never, ever apologize to Clare.

  Minnie’s arm tightened around Sue’s waist for a moment. “Me, too,” she said. “Can you move your trotters, piggy? This is your chance to get outdoors for a minute.”

  Slowly, step by step, they made it to the doorstep. Sue leaned against the lintel, looking at the barns, the wrinkled merinos in the pasture, the maple with a halo of golden leaves at the top.

  “You’re so weak—I didn’t realize.” Minnie sounded worried.

  “I’ll get stronger,” Sue said. “But make sure you don’t tell Mother!” If her weakness worried Minnie, how much more it would trouble Mother! Sue felt protective, as if Mother were still that shocked and grieving girl.

  Each night after that Sue walked, across the room, around the room, and once all the way to Minnie’s bedroom. Her legs felt liquid, and having made it that far, she had to lean on the bureau. She looked into the mirror at her face, heavily shadowed in the light of the kerosene lamp. How pale she seemed. Minnie, beside her, was as dark as a Negro by comparison.

  Suddenly Minnie crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at the mirror. Then she bent over with both hands pressed to her mouth, trying to hold back her giggles.

  “Shh!” Sue hissed, gazing at the interesting hollows in her cheeks, the fevered-looking darkness of her dilated eyes. Then she stretched her mouth like a frog’s and tried to make her eyes bulge, and Minnie squealed. Sue started laughing, too. After a moment they heard Mother’s sleepy voice. “Girls? Is anything wrong?”