Lark ran to help, Sally following her.
When she had fetched the supplies, Nell called, “Hilly, dear, come meet some friends, and have tea and cookies.” Turning to Stella, she explained again, “My son was injured in the war. Shell shock.”
Stella said, “I’m so sorry.” Mrs. Wheeler was distressed, not repelled. Here, Nell thought, was someone with no emotional carapace. What courage it must take to go out in public. She hoped the woman would feel safe here.
Hilly sat at the kitchen table with his own paper and crayons. From there, he could see the little girls on the living-room floor, and they could likewise see him. Now and then, Lark rose, climbing on a kitchen chair to see what Hilly had drawn.
“That?” she asked, pointing to a figure.
“Swan,” he said, though the word was difficult. “Bird.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding and climbing down again.
“Wite,” he called after her. White.
Sally was intent on her drawing, lips pulled tight against her teeth in concentration.
Hilly walked over and ventured to look. “That?”
“Mama.”
“Doing?”
“Sleeping. Mama needs to sleep.” As if he might not understand, she added, “Sleep is good.”
“Yeth.”
In the living room, Nell asked, “So, have you ladies joined sodality?”
“Not yet,” Arlene said, glancing at Stella.
“Well, it isn’t compulsory,” Nell told her. “I myself rarely go, though it’s fun when they put on the fall bazaar. I enjoy waiting tables and visiting with the farm families—I grew up on a small farm.”
“We’re both converts,” Arlene explained. “We’re afraid they’ll expect us to be A-plus, if you understand—to prove we’re worthy.”
Nell laughed. “Oh, yes, I understand. And you’re probably right. But I don’t think I’m an A-plus Catholic either.”
With Nell’s laugh, the atmosphere lightened and the conversation turned to books. Both younger women proclaimed themselves avid readers, though Stella admitted, “I was a big reader. Lately, it’s harder . . . to find the time.”
Nell told them of her love affair with Mr. Wodehouse, how he bucked her up when she felt low. “What would I have done when Hilly came home from the war if I hadn’t had Mr. Wodehouse?” She made a mental note to order Lord Emsworth and Others for Stella.
Arlene leaned toward Fitzgerald, herself. “Of course, I’ve only read a couple of things: The Beautiful and the Damned and Tender Is the Night.” She glanced quickly at Stella, but the quiet woman was immersed in her own thoughts. “Anyway, he seems kindly toward women. Sympathetic.”
“I confess I haven’t read him, but I will now.” Nell rose to replenish the cookie plate. “Has either of you met Agatha Nightingale? She’s a writer here in town. She writes . . . romantic stories, for Woman’s Home Journal. I’ll introduce you.” It was gratifying to be able to trot out a celebrity to impress new friends.
Meanwhile, the little girls had picked up their paper and crayons and carried them to the kitchen table, displaying the pages for Hilly and explaining what they’d drawn.
“That?” Hilly asked, pointing to Lark’s picture.
“Train. Depot. I live there.”
“Train you live in?”
“No. Depot.”
“Train I like.” He didn’t connect this conversation with Lark’s earlier story of boarding one and not returning.
“Did you ever ride on a train?” Sally asked him.
He nodded. “Moon on water.”
“Moon on water.” Grown-up talk, they thought.
chapter fifty-three
WHEN HER GUESTS HAD LEFT, Nell sat mulling over the visit, concerned about Stella and Sally. Stella was clearly unhappy, but it was more than simple unhappiness, and Nell felt she must tread lightly, for fear. Fear of what? Well, there was the problem; she wasn’t certain. Kindness appeared the only safe approach.
And Sally. What of her? What was it like for her at home? Such a little bit of a thing, and yet taking on responsibility for her mother. The father, Nell understood, was on the road five days a week, selling office supplies and furniture. And, with millions out of work, probably happy to have a job.
That year of 1937 Hilly finally ventured into the world again, sometimes crossing Main Street to the post office. Now and then he found a postcard from Elvira, like the one she sent him of waves breaking on a Ventura beach. “Wish you were here to play in the surf,” she’d written.
At first he’d been timid about leaving the apartment. The outside world frightened him—but Arlene Erhardt did not. She had stopped by late one afternoon in her husband Willie’s pickup.
“Come for a drive with Lark and me,” she told him.
And he had gone. He and Lark sat in the back, hanging onto the truck’s sides and letting the breeze blow in their faces. He laughed the open-mouth chortle that caused him to drool, but no one cared—not Lark and not the open sky.
Later in the summer, he sometimes walked along Main Street, even entering a store if something in the window piqued his interest. This came to an end when customers complained that he frightened them: his sometimes wild and impatient speech; his gimpy, drunken walk. He was a man without self-control, they said. He might be a danger to women. Businesspeople couldn’t afford to lose customers in hard times, so they shooed him out, not always kindly.
For a while he remained close to home, sitting in his room, watching people come and go, especially those entering and leaving the post office. Sometimes they carried letters or packages, even large cartons.
In September, he began to wait on the bench outside the post office, offering to carry packages. Some people shoved him aside; most passed him as if they neither saw nor heard. But a few, like Stella and Arlene, let him tote their mail to their homes. Occasionally they invited him in for cookies and milk—oatmeal cookies at Arlene’s, Fig Newtons at Stella’s. Once, Stella forgot he was there and disappeared, probably to sleep. And people—again, like Stella and Arlene—gave him a penny or two. These he handed over to Nell. He was, after all, the man of the house.
Agatha Nightingale, once a professional companion, now had a companion of her own—“a girl” who on occasion served dinner on the screened back porch. Agatha was regularly wined and dined by her magazine in New York, so Nell wasn’t surprised to find that her friend had acquired a taste for scotch whiskey. Agatha wasn’t shy about offering Nell a highball, either—and Nell did not refuse.
Agatha had known difficulty. She was a sympathetic soul and, despite the stories she wrote, could keep a secret. Nell felt comfortable confiding in her about Stella Wheeler.
“Oh, dear,” Agatha said when Nell had finished. “I knew a Mrs. Sonnenberg, over in Fairmont.” With her handkerchief Agatha wiped sweat from her glass. “I wish I could think of something helpful, Nell, something you could do, but Mrs. Sonnenberg ended up in the state hospital. Nobody understands these things.”
“I can’t let that happen to Stella. There’s a little girl.” Nell let the subject drop. She didn’t want to hear more about the hopeless case of Mrs. Sonnenberg. Pulling up her socks, metaphorically speaking, she ventured, “I sense we’re celebrating. Am I right?”
And, indeed, Agatha burst out—for Agatha owned only so much savoir faire—“I have a publisher!”
“You mean Woman’s Home Journal?”
“No, no. A book publisher!”
“A book publisher!” Nell raised her glass. “To you and your book—what book?”
“Well, mainly it’s the stories they’ve already printed in Woman’s Home Journal. Guess the title!”
“I have no idea.”
“Maidens’ Prayers. Remember, that was the title of one of the early stories?”
“I remember.”
“I’ll still pay you for your work, like always. Do you still promise not to give me away?”
“Of course.”
“Ca
n I tempt you with another highball?”
“Please do.”
Before Nell left, Agatha said, “I know you’re worried about this Mrs. Wheeler. If I think of anything, I’ll call you. Anyway, she may be an entirely different case from Mrs. Sonnenberg. Don’t borrow trouble.”
Was that what she was doing—borrowing trouble?
In Harvester, the excitement surrounding the publication of Maidens’ Prayers was unrivaled by anything since the Armistice. Except for the usual malcontents, like Elsie Schroeder, the town could not have been happier. Wasn’t Agatha a reflection of Harvester’s sophistication?
Max Hardesty, the new publisher of the Standard Ledger, ran a long, lavishly illustrated interview with Agatha. In each of the photos, the authoress wore her tweeds and Tyrolean hat. The walking stick, with its silver sphinx head, merited its own short paragraph.
Naturally, the St. Bridget Examiner also gave her space, as did the Red Berry Weekly News and the Ula Flyer. But her real coup was a page-one story in the Minneapolis Tribune. The paper lauded her success as another example of Minnesota’s literary repute, like that of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis.
In early December, the library hosted a gala party. Larry Lundeen and Eudora laid out a buffet of cold beef and chicken, Jell-O salads, and desserts. Half the town turned out. (“The half that can read,” Eudora sniffed.)
Toasts were raised with coffee and teacups, and Agatha was called upon to speak. She forsook the tweeds on this occasion, appearing instead in a “handsome Burgundy wool two-piece with peplum,” as the Standard Ledger would later recount.
Wearing pearls and small gold earrings, she was just as her audience wished—nicely turned out without being too flossy. She had come prepared with a short written response, which she and Nell had pulled together, thanking Larry for the lovely buffet and the townsfolk for being so supportive of her writing efforts.
“I am honored by your great kindness,” she said, her eyes misting. “I was raised in poverty and never expected to be more than what I was, a hired girl at least, a paid companion at most.
“I would never have had the means to be anything else had it not been for the generosity of Mrs. Bernard Stillman. Since beginning my writing career, I have wondered often about the many young women who have dreams but no means. For this reason, the bulk of the proceeds from Maidens’ Prayers will establish a yearly scholarship for a worthy young female graduate of Harvester High School.”
In a village, nothing takes one further than sincere humility—or money. Applause and huzzahs greeted Agatha’s remarks. This was celebrity.
Sales of Maidens’ Prayers exceeded expectations and, true to her promise, Agatha paid Nell her fifteen percent. Nell had proposed donating her fee to the fund as well, but Agatha put her foot down, pointing out Nell’s obligations to Hilly.
“You’re not getting any younger,” she said with customary candor.
The secrecy surrounding Agatha’s success lent a touch of romance to Nell’s life. Without fancying herself a puppet master, she was tickled to play the role of indispensable private secretary. Her life seemed almost as intricately woven as one of Mr. Wodehouse’s novels but, she admitted, without his delicious to-ing and fro-ing, mistaken identities, and cordons of nemeses lined up three deep to bar the road to perfect bliss.
chapter fifty-four
“NELL,” AGATHA BEGAN, her tone sober. She set her teacup aside. “I’ve run out of stories. This second book was my swan song.”
“Maybe the well is temporarily dry,” Nell suggested.
“No. I’m depleted. Really depleted. It’s been nine years!”
“Not possible.”
“Well, it’s 1938—and we began in 1929. Nine years.” Agatha’s eyes wandered Nell’s living room, gathering memories. “It was all a miracle. Especially working with you.” She hesitated. “I’m leaving Harvester.”
“Oh, dear. What’s happened?”
Ignoring the question, Agatha said, “I feel bad deserting you. Will you be all right financially?”
“Goodness, yes. You’re kind to worry.”
“Maybe you should try your hand at stories.”
“But I’ve led such a quiet life.”
“Well, in any case . . . I told the magazine I’d run out of stories. And they said they actually need an editor to beat the bushes for other writers like me. Isn’t that funny? I’ll be Nell Stillman for someone else.”
At the door, she held Nell’s hands. “And about that Mrs. Wheeler: I’ve been thinking, and I think she’s more like Mrs. DeVane, over in Windom, who had a ‘spell’ for several years. She snapped right out of it one day and was her old self again. Nobody understands these things.”
Kindly liar.
And then Agatha was off to New York. “I’ll write,” she promised, and she did, regularly, retailing the glamour of New York and publishing, as well as the plain hard work of it. “To tell the truth, Nell, it’s harder than writing. Or almost. What I need is an editor to edit the editor!”
Agatha’s departure wasn’t quite like a death, but perhaps a little.
On a tolerably warm late-July morning, Nell and Hilly walked out to the Catholic cemetery. Beyond the gates, old Adolph Arndt was carrying a bucket of water to some plantings on a recent grave. Adolph was bent and nearly blind now, but since he’d retired from the Water and Power Company a decade or more ago, he’d taken up caring for the cemetery a few hours each day, and St. Boniface paid him a trifling for his labor.
“Adolph,” Nell called as they approached. “It’s Nell Stillman. How are you? I’ve come to visit graves.”
Adolph nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” He doffed an old cotton cap. “And your boy with you.” Though Hilly was nearing forty, he was yet a boy to Adolph.
“I was hoping to catch you,” Nell continued. “I hear you raise perennials beside the caretaker’s shed. Do you sell them?”
“I do.”
“What do you have?”
Adolph led the way toward the shed, calling behind him, “There’s some compact spirea and peonies and mock orange. You take a look and see what you like. I’ll wait till late afternoon to plant ’em. Easier on ’em that way.”
“That will be fine.”
When Nell had chosen and was walking away, Adolph hailed her. “Ma’am.”
She turned.
“About that business with the school board. Back around o-five or six. I was wrong. I hope you don’t hold it too much against me.”
“You did what you thought was right.”
“Maybe, but I never felt good about it.”
“I’m glad you told me.”
Well, the poison notes hadn’t come from him.
Hilly waited beside his father’s grave. “Flowers?”
“A mock-orange bush. It will smell like . . . the Elysian Fields. Adolph will plant it for us.”
He nodded.
“Would you like to sit a while? When you were little, you thought it might be wrong to sit on a grave. I told you your father would be glad of the company.” They lowered themselves and for several minutes were silent. Around them, the air buzzed and chirped and yet seemed still. Their everyday lives distant and a little unreal.
“Bird remember?”
“Bird?”
“Big.”
“Oh. The swan. Of course.”
“White.”
“Yes.” Nell paused. “Is there anything you’d like to tell your father?” she asked.
Hilly considered. “Again I’ll come. The harmonica?”
“Good idea.” She brushed grass from her skirt. “And will you play for John and Juliet and the others?”
“Yes. And Silly my friend.”
“Silly your friend?”
“My friend ambulance.”
“Your friend in the war.”
Hilly spread his arms, taking in the cemetery. “Wish here.”
“So you could play for him? Did you play for him in the war?”
At th
at, Hilly began weeping and threw his body face-down on Herbert’s grave. Nell patted his back and, when he had calmed, offered him a handkerchief.
Hilly rose with difficulty and shuffled toward the north fence. Leaning against a splintering post, he studied the wheat fields lying between the cemetery and the tree-hidden lake, as though he might spy in the expanse something wishfully sought.
At the end of May, Nell retired from thirty-seven years as Harvester’s third-grade teacher. There was no fuss: a small party in the home-economics room; cake and coffee; the gift of a fountain pen.
Nell wasn’t affronted or disappointed. These little things were the tradition, though they did lack something. Anyway, thirty-seven years of children, most of them endearing; of exams and lesson plans; of pride and despair; of memories—Imogene Weatherford standing tall and singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during a lightning storm in December; Henry Everson weeping when his family’s farm was lost—these were the real gifts she took away.
Returning from the party, she stood before her bedroom mirror, changing her clothes. She was sixty-one; her hair, now ten years in a bob, was graying in streaks. At sixty-one she had things to plan.
Were it not for Hilly and his care, she wouldn’t mind growing old. Between her small pension, the funds John had left, and Agatha’s fifteen percent, she would manage. But would a nursing home accept Hilly when she was gone? Was there an old soldier’s home in the county? Instead of simplifying, life grew more complicated as one approached the end.
On the bedside table lay Heavy Weather, an appropriate title for her mood, though of course Wodehouse never brought her low. Gathering up the book, she carried it to the green chair in the living room.
“When, some months before, the news had got about that the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, brother of the Earl of Emsworth and as sprightly an old gentleman as was ever thrown out of a Victorian music-hall, was engaged in writing the recollections of his colourful career as a man about town in the nineties, the shock to the many now highly respectable members of the governing classes who in their hot youth had shared it was severe.”
Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse Page 24