Westminster West

by Jessie Haas

  Minnie gasped and wiped her hands down her face, smoothing it out. “No, Mrs. Gorham, we’re just talking. Sorry.”

  There was a murmur from Mother and Father’s bedroom, and then Father said, “That’s all right. Enjoy yourselves.” His voice was indulgent, and Sue suddenly remembered: Minnie was leaving in two days. Minnie would go, and Clare would come back. A small, hard lump, like a potato, seemed to form in Sue’s heart.

  No, she reminded herself. Clare had learned to work. She would help Sue get back on her feet. They would begin to work in double harness. Clare would make sure that Sue was the one invited to join the next Campbell excursion. That last kiss on the cheek had promised.

  But over the next two days the lump in Sue’s heart grew heavier and harder.

  16

  THE VACATION PARTY arrived in Westminster West on Tuesday evening, and Clare rested overnight at the Campbell mansion. In the morning Mother took Minnie back and brought Clare home.

  Sue waited nervously. The house was empty. The big hall door stood open to the morning sun and breezes. Once Sue found herself on her feet looking out. She had taken herself to the doorway as unconsciously as if she were perfectly well. Now her knees weakened, but she stood anyway, half leaning against the lintel, until she heard the sound of hooves. Then she returned to the sofa and lay back against the pillows.

  The buggy stopped at the lawn, outside Sue’s range of vision. A creak, the swish of skirts …

  Clare came through the big door. She glanced into the parlor and started. “Sue! Down here? You’re better!”

  The weight on Sue’s chest began to burn. Clare hadn’t asked, then, and Mother hadn’t told her. As clear as print Sue could read Clare’s hopes. “No,” she said, faintly, above the rapid thudding of her heart. “I’m not much better.”

  “Oh.” After a moment’s hesitation Clare came into the room.

  There were many elegant new touches to her dress, and her hair was put up differently, in a simple, graceful sweep. Her face was creamy pale, but her composed, distant expression was shattered. Clare was off-balance, and Sue waited. Maybe everything would still be all right. Clare could still come and give her a hug, ask how she felt with real concern, and then she would say, “I am improving. I’ve started to walk.”

  But Clare’s parted lips closed and firmed again. She stood unmoving in the center of the room, saying nothing but making Sue very aware of the afghan spread over her untidily, the books on the floor, the knitting basket trailing its blue sleeve, the screen in the corner.

  “My, Sue,” she said after a moment, “you’ve certainly moved in here!”

  Mother came through the front door. “Clare, why don’t you rest? I’ll get dinner going, and the boys will bring in your trunk when they come up from the field.” She disappeared into the kitchen, and the stove lids began to rattle.

  Clare sank into the rocker in a graceful, exhausted way, the old Clare, with gestures more polished and convincing.

  Sue took a deep breath, hoping to throw off the pressure in her chest. “How was it?” Her voice came out thin as a thread.

  “Beautiful,” Clare said vaguely. “Everyone knows Aunt Emma, even though she’s very country, because the Campbells are such important men.”

  Aunt Emma “very country”? She’d always seemed “very city” to Sue—at least, for Westminster West. “So people were nice to you?”

  “Yes.” Clare looked around the room and then back to the sofa. Sue felt an unspoken push. Get off! Get up! Her heart thumped, painfully.

  I’m here now, she thought. And I’m not moving!

  “Hi there!”

  A man’s voice, at the open door. A black shape against the light. Sue’s head spun. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Minnie around?”

  Johnny Coombs!

  “No,” Clare stammered, “she’s—she’s gone back to the Campbells.”

  Sue heard his footsteps in the hall. He was in their house! What did he think he was doing? That door wasn’t for just anyone to walk through. She opened her eyes again, to see a big clod of dirt on Mother’s grosgrain carpet. Johnny was looking in at them, color in his cheeks, his long, arching dark eyes less dull than usual. For a moment he looked as handsome and able as any young man.

  “Sue!” Clare hissed. “Do something!”

  “Um, Johnny.” Sue’s voice sounded weak and timid; she forced more strength into it. “Johnny, maybe you’d like to step around to the kitchen? Mother will give you … a glass of lemonade.”

  “I want to see Minnie,” Johnny said, as if they might be hiding her.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Go up to the Campbells’ and see her,” Clare said, with sudden energy. “Go to the back door.”

  Johnny’s big shaggy head turned toward Clare. The room was quiet.

  An emphatic bang from the kitchen as the oven door slipped from Mother’s hand and sprang shut. Sue heard the slow hoofbeats of the big team out on the road.

  Now Mother’s quick steps came nearer. Sue opened her mouth to call a warning. Too late. Mother came into the hall, jumped, gasped, and pressed one hand to her heart. “Johnny! My goodness, you frightened me!”

  Johnny’s head turned slowly. He said nothing.

  “I—how—is your mother well?” Mother caught sight of the boots on the carpet. Her mouth opened and closed, as she considered mentioning it.

  “I came to see Minnie,” Johnny said again. “I found out she was here.”

  The air in the room seemed to thicken like a jelly and hold them all suspended. He wanted what they did not have to give. He would stand there asking until the crack of doom.

  In the extraordinary silence Sue heard a thump out in the yard, footsteps, and there was Ed behind Johnny, his face all alive, smiling that dangerous smile you see just before a fight. He tapped Johnny on the shoulder.

  Johnny turned, fists bulging. The rug twisted and smeared.

  “What can we do for you, Coombs?” Ed asked. Henry was coming quickly over the lawn, and Father was behind him.

  “He came to see Minnie,” Mother said before Johnny could answer. “But of course she’s gone.”

  “Then I guess you’d better go, too!” Ed said. “At least step off my mother’s rug.” His voice sounded gentle, but the hall was full of big shoulders, crowding.

  Nothing happened for a moment. Johnny’s face was dark red; they could hear his breathing. Henry was pale and furious. Ed still smiled, a bright spot of color on each cheekbone.

  Then Johnny said, in an unexpectedly soft voice, “Sorry. I didn’t realize.” He moved toward the front step, and Ed and Henry backed up to let him pass.

  Mother jerked into motion and stepped to the door. “Johnny, wait! I’ll send something along for your mother.”

  “Got to go, if I’m going to see Minnie,” Johnny said, vanishing from Sue’s range of vision.

  “Lucky Minnie!” Henry muttered loudly. There was a sudden quiet. Was he coming back? Then hoofbeats, and the ugly white plowhorse in his dirty harness passed the door, Johnny on his back.

  Mother let her breath out in a whoosh. “Boys, you might have handled that more tactfully! He didn’t mean any harm.”

  “He was scaring the girls,” Ed said.

  “He wasn’t scaring me!” Sue said indignantly, and would have said more, but for remembering that she’d almost fainted like a heroine in a novel.

  Father said, “Nobody’s got any need to be scared of Johnny Coombs—or to pick on him, either.”

  Ed’s face reddened. “Well he’s got to be kept in line, hasn’t he? Letting him do whatever he wants—that’s not treating him right, is it? That’s not treating him like everybody else.”

  “Johnny doesn’t do much of what he wants,” Father said. “For Tolman’s sake, if nothing more, I’ll have him treated kindly. All right?”

  For Father, that was a harsh speech, and Ed looked down at his boots. Henry said, “I don’t think you’d care for the way Johnny
talks about girls, Captain, if you happened to hear it. But you won’t. He only does it around young men. I tell you, he’s not as much of a fool as you all think!”

  “He’s got some sense, anyway,” Sue said. “He’s picked Minnie to fall in love with.”

  Tsk! went Clare’s tongue; just a tiny sound, quieter than a match strike. Sue stared for a second. The blood thundered in her ears.

  “Don’t you tsk! Minnie’s worth ten of you! You don’t mean to lift another finger—”

  “Susan!” Mother said.

  They all were looking at her. Their mouths hung open. Clare stood rigid, slender in her pale, fashionable dress, one hand pressed to the base of her throat. Sue’s face grew hot, and hotter.

  “Don’t I smell something burning?” Clare asked at last, in a gently reminding voice.

  “Oh! My biscuits!” Mother rushed away, and slowly everyone else followed, leaving Sue alone.

  17

  SUE FELT HER HANDS TREMBLE. A column of heat ran up the middle of her chest. It roared like a fire, and it felt good. The big hard lump that had weighed on her heart for two days was simply incinerated. She could breathe freely.

  Out in the kitchen questions were being answered. The snatches Sue heard were of dresses, hotel dinners and hotel trappings, tennis matches watched from the lawn.

  “Didn’t you play?” Ed asked.

  “Oh, no!” Clare said. “Neither of the Marys is very strong, and Julia and I found that the mountain air made us giddy.”

  You had your own game! Sue thought. On the farm, or where other young women were athletic, delicate health let Clare excuse herself and play the game she preferred, one of the graceful girls in white.

  Pots clinked; spoons rattled. In the sharpness of the sounds Sue could hear Mother’s anger. But Clare’s voice went on, light, smooth, with a new cultivated sound, new prinks and curlicues. She’s smoothing Mother, Sue realized. What does she want?

  “So, Mother,”—Here it came!—“Aunt Emma’s probably going to ask me to visit them in Boston this winter. Isn’t that nice of her?”

  She was supposed to ask me, Sue thought. But she didn’t feel astonished. There was nothing surprising about this.

  “Has she invited you?” Mother asked, with some constraint in her voice.

  “No, but she mentioned it. She wouldn’t have done that if she weren’t nearly certain.”

  “I wouldn’t set my heart on it, Clare,” Mother said. “People like the Campbells have the wherewithal to change their plans rapidly.”

  “But if Sue is well enough—”

  “Just a minute, Clare,” Mother interrupted. A moment later she came in and put Sue’s tray down on the table with a bang. “Susan, I’d like to know what on earth has gotten into you!”

  Sue stared back at her, meeting the hard brilliance of Mother’s eyes with a hardness of her own. You don’t have any idea, do you? she thought. You simply can’t imagine!

  But after a moment tears began to prickle in her hard, dry eyes. She wasn’t up to the strain of defying Mother. She felt her face flush, and she whispered, without quite meaning to, “I miss Minnie.”

  Mother sighed, the way she sighed when Ed plugged the watermelons or Henry wouldn’t stop talking or any of them quarreled. “Minnie will be back here every Monday. In the meantime you could make an effort to get along with your sister!”

  “Why? Why is Minnie coming Mondays?”

  “I need help with the washing,” Mother said, “and your aunt can spare her.”

  “But can’t Clare—”

  Mother glanced away, as if embarrassment just brushed her with its sleeve in passing. “I don’t want to risk Clare’s health. She’s looking pale—”

  “She’s pale because she hardly set foot outdoors in three weeks!”

  “Clare’s health has always been delicate—”

  “Mother! Half the time she’s faking so I’ll do the work!”

  “Susan Gorham!” Mother said. “I don’t want to hear another word of this! It would hardly do your sister much good to fake sickness now, would it?”

  Now! The word rang on in the suddenly quiet room with a bitter sound. Now outside help must be brought in. Now the special, long-cherished formulation of the family was spoiled.

  But that’s not true! Sue thought. Faking sickness would do Clare nearly as much good as it always had. It would cost Mother more. That was the only difference.

  After Clare had gone to bed, Sue lay staring at the white door between them. Her eyes burned. She heard Clare undress, heard each little sound she made settling into bed.

  You are not going to Boston, she thought through the door, like a bullet. You are not going. I won’t let you. The column up her center was like a smelting furnace, and she was glad of it. It annealed her heart against all hurt and prevented her from crying.

  Her legs ached. They wanted to get moving. They could carry her now, but no one knew. Right here, she thought. I’m staying right here until something in this family changes.

  18

  FOR THE NEXT FOUR DAYS Sue lay implacably on the couch. She didn’t sit up for meals, only propped herself on her elbow. She didn’t knit, although her jersey was nearly finished and she had been eager to wear it. She just lay on the pillow, watched, and listened.

  The house was full of struggle. Mother needed Clare’s help, and everything Clare did inhibited her from asking. It ranged from putting on a slightly nicer than everyday dress the morning after her return, to the writing of letters to new friends each evening on the best paper, to the way she held her head, the way she walked. Mother responded by doing the hardest jobs herself, asking Clare to help only with the easy work. Clare was winning that struggle.

  But she won’t beat me, Sue thought. They had been struggling for three years now, since Clare’s return from that first trip with Aunt Emma, and Sue had never, ever won. She hadn’t been allowed to. She was the older sister and must protect the younger. She was well, and Clare was sick.

  This time she would not lose. She felt hard inside, and her eyes were hard as pebbles when they looked at Clare. Her body surged with energy. It was all she could do not to get up and pace the floor.

  She didn’t think of Boston. It would be nice to see something of the wider world, but it was here that mattered. Here in Westminster West the change had to be made.

  “I can’t stand it!” Minnie whispered Monday morning. “The way she presses her hand—” Minnie’s own wet red hand left a damp spot on her calico dress, just below the neckline. “You should have seen her at church! Herb Phillips has this big burn across the back of his hand, and she saw it, and—‘oh, my!’” Minnie pressed her hand to her throat again.

  “I know,” Sue said. She had witnessed every one of Clare’s mannerisms: the new way of holding a book, the new way of sitting in a chair, as if to accommodate a bigger bustle than Clare actually possessed. Did these gestures play well in a resort hotel? In Westminster West they seemed absurd, but evidently not to Mother.

  Mother is a fool! Sue thought. But that was unbearable. “What’s the news?” she asked.

  “Oh, the big news! Julia’s finally gotten your aunt to take her to Europe!”

  “Europe!” The word expanded and shivered on the air, like the sound of the clock striking. Europe …

  “They decided last night,” Minnie said. “Your aunt doesn’t want to because it’ll be almost a year, but Julia won. They’re taking a steamer sometime in November.”

  Then Boston was out of the question. “Does Clare know?”

  “I suppose she knows by now!” Minnie said. Clare had gone to the Campbell house to spend the day.

  “Minnie?” Mother called from the yard. “I’m ready to wring these out.”

  Europe! Sue thought, listening to Minnie laugh with Mother and the splash of water in the old zinc catch basin. They wouldn’t ask Clare to go, would they? A vacation in the White Mountains, a few weeks in Boston—that was one thing. A year in Europe was quite a
nother.

  “So, I’ve put a stop to Johnny Coombs,” Minnie said over dinner. Sue looked up in confusion.

  “Put a stop?”

  “Yes! I told him I was engaged.”

  “To who?” Sue gasped.

  “Nobody, silly! I didn’t say who. I said it was a secret, but I had to be fair to him, I had to tell him, and he wasn’t to tell a soul. Poor thing—I did feel sorry for him.”

  “Minnie … will you go to Europe?”

  Minnie looked startled. “No. Why would they take a hired girl? They’ll do for each other on the boat and hire a maid over there, I suppose. It’s a great cost, you know, even for people like the Campbells.”

  Then of course they wouldn’t take Clare.

  “You do look strange this morning, Sue. Are you all right? How’s your walking?”

  They might take Clare as a maid. They wouldn’t have to pay her, the way they would Minnie.

  “Are you walking?”

  How loud and insistent Minnie sounded! Sue shook her head.

  “What? Why not?”

  Sue grasped at random for an explanation. “Clare’s a light sleeper. I’m afraid I’ll wake her.”

  “You’re joking!” Minnie gasped. “Susie!”

  But if neither she nor Clare could go to Boston, then they both would stay here. And if they stayed, things must be fairer. It was more important than ever. “What, Minnie? What do you keep going on about?”

  Minnie sat back with an offended look. “I was saying I think you’re crazy! But never mind!”

  Sue stretched out her hand. “No, Minnie. Don’t get mad. I’m just—”

  “Crazy,” Minnie said when Sue couldn’t go on. She took Sue’s hand, though, and gave it a short, sharp squeeze.

  Clare had not been asked to go to Europe. Sue knew as soon as Clare came through the parlor late that afternoon, walking stiffly and slowly as if her bones might break. The change of plans must have been a great shock, and of course she couldn’t show that. All day Clare must have been obliged to conceal her feelings. She walked straight into her room and closed the door.